Govt's Sh1bn gift to Embakasi Ranching members

The government has waived Sh1.05 billion in titling fees for 35,000 Embakasi Ranching Company Ltd shareholders, the Lands ministry has said.

Lands CS Farida Karoney announced that Sh30,000 each shareholder would have paid as processing fee will now be absorbed by the government.

She said President Uhuru Kenyatta had been pushing the ministry to conclude the matter. He issued a one-month deadline in March 2018.

Shareholders have been complaining about exorbitant billing. Besides titling fees, management had directed that they pay another Sh70,000 per share to cover visits, registration and survey costs.

Speaking on Citizen TV at the weekend, Ms Karoney said her ministry was investigating the suspected scam in which the schemers would rake in Sh3.5 billion.

“I am not aware of such a fee emanating from the ministry. We are doing this for free since the President has ordered that the government foot the bill,” she said.

“What I do not know is if the ranch management is collecting that fee, but we will investigate and direct accordingly.”

On Monday, Land Principal Secretary Nicholas Muraguri told Nation.Africa that the dissolution and titling were on course and confirmed that the National Titling Centre will not charge shareholders.

“The free of charge titling programme will follow the NLMS (New Land Management System) time frame where all land in the metropolis (Nairobi, Kajiado, Murang'a, Machakos and Kiambu) will be fully digitised by close of this month (August),” he said.

“We are filing the Embakasi land online and all of the shareholding that passes the vetting process is being titled and we are sure we will be through profiling all the 16,000 acres of the ranch land soonest possible.”

The PS added that the government has imposed a caveat on all of the ranch’s land.

The revelation came even as some 15,000 members – 42 percent shareholding - wrote to the Lands ministry complaining that the titling drive had enabled land grabbers to be certified as genuine shareholders.

“It should be noted that there are very senior government officers, some working in State House, the military, the National Police Service and other sectors of power who have been included as shareholders,” said James Njoroge, leader of the dissenting group.

In their letter, they accuse the ministry of trying to force a solution for the ranch without following due process.

Solution for the past 50 years

Mr Njoroge said the ministry had identified “some persons to work with, in utter disregard of the normal procedure where a board of directors legally constituted transacts business on behalf of the shareholders”.

They argue that on April 13, 2019, shareholders elected a 14-member board of directors who were issued with a CR12 certificate by the registrar of companies on July 20.

It is then that the people the ministry had identified to work with on the ranch matter rushed to court and filed the miscellaneous application No. 226 of 2019.

This and other pending legal matters were consolidated into HHC E096 under Justice Grace Nzioka before they were inherited by Justice Grace Ngenye Kariuki.

The person the Lands ministry recognised as the chair of the ranch was Nyokabi Mathenge, who said she fully supports the President’s directive to dissolve the company.

“We will not let power competition in the ranch derail the process. It is for the common good. We have waited for a solution for the past 50 years and when dawn visits us with a solution, the last thing we will entertain is greed for power,” she said.

Allegations of corruption, she said, are best handled in court but not in letters and public declarations that can be seen as incitement against a government service.

Mr Njoroge dismissed Mathenge as a pretender to the management, saying she had exhibited impunity and contempt for the legal process that has demanded she vacate office and the government cease interfering with the affairs of the ranch.

Ms Karoney said such tussles explain why the ranch that was registered in 1972 has issued only 2,000 title deeds to its shareholders.

“That is the impasse that we seek to break and process all of the 35,000 by September,” she said.

The ranch was started by, among others, Kenya’s founding father Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and the late Kiambu politician Njenga Karume as a dairy and horticulture enterprise before it transformed into a land-buying and selling outfit.

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