The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) has moved to court for orders to recover Ksh. 5 million worth of grabbed public land belonging to the Muslim Primary School in Nakuru County.
In the recovery suit filed on Friday before the Nakuru Environment and Land Court, EACC sued Catherine Wanjiku Mbugua, Alice Wamuhu Chege, Lawrence Maina Mwangi and former MP Sammy Silas Mwaita as the first, second, third and 4th defendants respectively.
EACC says the land was allegedly grabbed by the first three suspects with the help of Sammy Mwaita, who at the time was the former Commissioner of Lands.
“The school was grabbed by private developers with the aid of former Commissioner of Lands Sammy Mwaita,” read a section of the court documents.
“As the Commissioner of Lands, he was the custodian of all Government Land, and therefore, by purporting to allocate land belonging to a public school to a private person, he breached his duty to the public.”
The commission now wants the court to issue orders declaring any allocation illegal, to cancel entries relating to ownership of the land and bar the defendants from authorizing any transfers, developing or occupying the land.
“A declaration that the allocation and transfer of the parcel of land described as Nakuru Municipality Block 15/945 to Catherine Mbugua and all subsequent transactions involving Alice Chege and Lawrence Mwangi were illegal, null and void and were incapable of conferring any ownership rights in the said public land, to any of them,” stated EACC.
“An order directed to the NakuruLand Registrar to rectify the Land Register by cancelling all the entries relating to the Defendants’ purported ownership of the said school land; and register the land in favour of Muslim Primary School, the rightful owner. A permanent injunction to restrain the Defendants by themselves, their agents, servants, employees, assigns or any other person whatsoever from charging, transferring, leasing, wasting, entering, developing, sub-dividing, occupying.”
According to EACC, the said land was allocated to the school in 1998 with an approximated size of 2.3 Hectares but Mwaita in 1999 authorised the land to be re-surveyed to 1.7 hectares.
The portion of 0.6 hectares which was fraudulently excised was then subdivided into five portions where one of the blocks was issued to the first defendant in 2001.
The third accused, Mwangi took over ownership before later transferring to Ms Chege.
“Subsequently, 1st Defendant entered into an agreement with 3rd Defendant to take over her purported interest in the fraudulently obtained Certificate of Lease in Nakuru Municipality Block 15/945 measuring 0.0446 hectares knowing very well that he had no transferable interest. The suit property was subsequently transferred to the 2nd Defendant,” EACC stated.
