Revoke all illegal land grabs

Self-serving actions by some top public officials are simply unacceptable and must never be tolerated as they border on criminality.

One is using one’s lofty position in community or national leadership to grab public property and deny access to the people who badly and genuinely need it. Such greed, nay, gluttony, is unacceptable.

There is a litany of such indiscretions almost throughout the country, with a few high-ranking officials sitting on huge tracts of land that should have been put to public use.

Corruption is rampant in the management of this vital resource, reducing Lands offices across the country to conduits for the shameless thievery.

The excitement about the repossession of 3,000 acres of grabbed land that had been earmarked for the development and extension of Nairobi’s new sewerage plant in Ruai on the city’s outskirts is the latest example.

A politician, who reportedly intended to put up private residential housing, malls, schools and other amenities on it, is the main culprit.

However, this development should not have been allowed to get to the point where structures were erected and now have to be brought down at public expense.

The battle to take over this land has been raging for over a decade between some shadowy groups and individuals.

It is simply an indictment of the Lands ministry, which is the custodian of this vital national resource, and the city county government.

It is inconceivable that the county’s political leadership and the technocrats at City Hall could not raise the red flag on such an apparent illegality that has been unfolding before their very own eyes for a number of years.

The first step should be to ensure there is room for expansion of the Dandora Sewage Plant to enable it to meet quality standards.

Secondly, the authorities must ensure that such a thing never happens again. The demolition of the illegal structures on the land will yield the largest recovery of grabbed land in the city. It should not be the end.

There are many other illegal land allocations that must be similarly revoked.