EXCITED: DP William Ruto, Safaricom CEO Bob Colymore and Labour CS Kazungu Kambi during a fundraising for Joyful Women Organisation (Joywo) at his Karen official residence on Thursday evening. Photo/DPPS
DEPUTY President William Ruto and Lands Cabinet Secretary Charity Ngilu have been linked to a prime piece of land that the Presbyterian Church of East Africa claims to own.
The two are said to have issued conflicting statements regarding the 4.2 acres, where several people have been injured as PCEA workers fought off attempts by demonstrators to bring down a perimeter wall and stop further construction.
While Ruto is said to have assured the church that the government will abide by the law in handling the issue, Ngilu is reported to have asked the church to give up the land on Peponi Road, insisting that it was irregularly allocated.
In a statement to the CID dated August 14, PCEA Moderator David Gathanju said that Ruto and Ngilu had separately contacted him over the property near Westgate and gave him conflicting statements.
The land in question is classified as a wetland and several organization have raised environmental concerns and questioned why construction work is undertaken on riparian land.
In 2011, the court ruled in favour of the PCEA occupancy of the land and the church put up a perimeter wall last month, in a joint venture with Afro machinery Kenya Ltd.
On July 12, three people were injured when armed youth guarding construction workers at the site clashed with demonstrators.
"On 3rd August 2014, H.E. the Deputy President called me and in our conversation, he inquired about the Church's Westlands project which he was aware about. I informed him what the cabinet secretary of Lands told me about. However, he told me that there was no cause of alarm, as the government respected the law," said the moderator in a statement to the CID.
He told the CID that four days later, he visited Ngilu in her office, and was accompanied by the Secretary General Festus Gitonga and the CEO of the Presbyterian Foundation Samuel Njoroge.
"During the meeting, the Cabinet Secretary requested that the Church abandon the said land and the government allocate us another one elsewhere since the procedure was not followed when allocating the same to the Church," Gathanju said in his statement.
He added that they declined to surrender it for they believe that the land was acquired in accordance with proper procedures.
"She (Ngilu) further said that the President had left her instructions that the construction be stopped and he be given a brief on the development on the said land upon return from an official visit to the United States of America," Gathanju added.
In the statement, the clergyman added that Ngilu called her/HIM? on August 12 at 11.27 am and in addition to probing if construction was going on, she informed him the file on the land cannot be retrieved from the ministry's records.
"She insisted that from the Ministry of Lands records, she is unable to retrieve any file related to this land, hence, doubted if we really owned the land," Gathanju said.
Gathanju's statement is accompanied by another one by Njoroge who is also the Secretary of the PCEA Foundation.
Njoroge told the CID that the church could not surrender the land as there were already contractual agreements between it and third parties on the construction. The nature of the development was not specified.
Last week, Nairobi county speaker Alex ole Magelo said he wants MCAs to probe the ownership of a controversial plot.
The Nairobi county government and the National Environment Management Authority have approved the construction by Njowaku Contractors.
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