Mercy Mwai @PeopleDailyKe
The controversial Ruaraka land saga that has continued to haunt the Jubilee administration has resurfaced after a new report questioned the move by the government to pay Sh1.5 billion for a land it owns.
Auditor General Edward Ouko now says he cannot confirm whether the payment by the Ministry of Education (MoE) was procedural and a proper charge to the public funds.
The release of the report could see Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i and Education Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang in trouble since the transactions kicked off on their watch.
Public utility
In the report tabled by Leader of Majority in the National Assembly Aden Duale, Ouko hit out at officials in MOE who authorised the transaction yet documents indicated that the 13.5-acre piece of land where Ruaraka High School and Drive Inn Primary School sit had been surrendered for public utility.
“Had due diligence been observed by all parties in the whole transaction, compensation for the land that ought to have been surrendered for public utilities should have not occurred,” he says.
He claimed that the ministry of Education went ahead and allowed the payment yet there was neither evidence of budgetary allocation, nor approval for it.
“In the circumstance, it has not been possible to confirm that the expenditure totalling to Sh1.5 billion for the year ended 30 June was procedural and a proper charge to public funds,” the report said.
Ouko also raised concerns over the beneficiaries, Afrison Export Import Ltd and Huelands Lt, firms associated with businessman Francis Mburu, who declined a subdivision of the land but went ahead and developed it contrary to the provisions of Physical Planning Act of 1996 which was revised in 2012.
The act provides that application for development be accompanied by plans and particulars indicating the purposes of the development and in particular show the proposed use and density, the land which the applicants intends to surrender for purpose of principle and secondary means of access to any subdivisions within the area included in the application in the adjoining land.
Cancel subdivision
Afrison Export Import Ltd and Huelands had initially applied for the subdivision of the land in 1984 to the then director of City Planning, who gave the proprietor a conditional subdivision approval.
The owners were to set aside land for public utilities, a move that the developers are said to have rejected through an un-referenced letter dated April 5 1984.
In the letter, they stated they were not interested in the conditional approval and thus the entire application of subdivision should be cancelled.
The land was acquired by the National Lands Commission (NLC) on behalf of MoE in April 2017 after it asked the ministry to set aside Sh3.2 billion as compensation.
NLC in September 2013 wrote to then Education Cabinet secretary informing him that Africon Experts Import Limited had filed a complaint with the commission that the two schools had been occupying the firm’s land for 30 years without compensation.
The new details come hardly a month after High Court ruled that the NLC misled the Ministry of Education to release Sh1.5 billion to acquire the parcel of land in Ruaraka where two schools are built.
Justices Bernard Eboso, Elijah Obaga and Kossy Bor of the Environment and Land Court ruled that the land where the two schools were built is public land and should have not been paid for.
According to the three judges, the commission did not do due diligence in ascertaining Mburu’s claim of historical injustices and thus ended up making the wrong recommendations to the government, leading to irregular approval of Sh3.2 billion payment to the businessman.
Already Director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Haji has hinted that there could be arrest of high-profile government officials in connection with land purchase.
The Senate Public Accounts and Investments Committee (CPAIC), Nairobi county government, the Ministry of Lands and the Auditor General in another report have all said that the acquisition of the land was unprocedural as it belonged to the government.
