106 families despair at a looming eviction by private developers

More than 100 families in Sabugo settlement scheme in Nyandarua County are living in despair days after unknown individuals descended on their 166 acres and began to subdivide it.

The disillusioned members say that if relevant authorities do not intervene they risk losing their land, the only place they have known as home for 29 years.

Speaking to the press in the controversial now scheme, the Chairman to the Sabugo Settlement scheme Joshua Ngugi says the residents who are awaiting title deeds to the 166-acre parcel of land are contending with harassment and death threats from private developers claiming to have legal ownership documents of the land.

Ngugi wants the area`s administration officers and the Registrar of lands to intervene and avert conflict between his members who he says have already received allotment certificates and the private developers whom he describes as unscrupulous investors.

He says their effort to seek redress from local authorities has been futile, mounting fears about the futures of the peasant farmers now unable to prepare their farmlands during the planting season that has begun.

Ngugi wants police to rein in the alleged invaders who he says are flouting an active court order barring subdivision and sale of the land.

The chairman says the state of affairs has led to cases of depression among them adding that they will not relent in their bid to retain their land for which they have labored for decades.

Issac Wangai, a small-scale dairy farmer who has an allotment certificate, says his sister`s grave lies in a part of the land hived off his father`s land to a private developer who has just begun to fence.

He says with half of the land gone amid the simmering dispute, prospects to expand his dairy venture are bleak and hardship looms large.

Susan Njoroge, a resident of the scheme, says the simmering dispute is an impediment to the development of schools, hospitals, and places of worship.