Investigative Report By Leo Odera Omolo In Kisumu City.
KENYANS do appreciate the concerted efforts being put by the government in ensuring that corruption is wiped out and consigned to the dustbins of history.
The same effort to retrieve public land illegally acquired either by companies, families, groups or individuals.
However, something is a miss somewhere. Nobody in the government or elsewhere seemed to be interested in knowing the fate of an ADC farm at Kimwani at Songhor, which sits on the foot of Nandi Escarpment below the Nandi hills.
The close to 10,000 acres of vast farm was previously owned by Mr Roderick Macleod, the younger brother of a one time the British Colonial Secretary Ian Macleod. The same white settler owned what was then known as JOLLY FARMERS HOTEL in Molo, which is located next to the Molo-Nakuru highway. The hotel was bought by the Kenya government in the late 1970s and it is now the GSU headquarters.
Large portion of the Kimwani ADC Farm was bought by the former Minister for Agriculture the late Dr. William Odongo Omamo, who was also one time Bondo MP and in his later years represented Muhoroni in the August House between 1997 and 2002. But before he succumbed to his death last year the late Omamo had sold most parts of his vast farm to the local communities and individuals.
The Agricultural Development Corporation {ADC} had the lion’s share and owned Kimwani ADC farm. Most part of the farm, which is believed to be in excesses of 6,000 acres, had planted sugar cane on it. The ADC had used the public funds in cultivating and planting all the sugar cane on the farm.
But all of a sudden, the former KANU regime in late 1980s and early 1990s moved with snake speed and appropriated the Kmwani ADC farm, and sub-divided it into 100 acres or more pieces, which were later allocated to the top government security chiefs, military men, permanent secretaries all of them Kalenjins. In fact the list of the names of the allotted with free land in Kimwani ADC farm reads like “Who is who in Kalenjin”.
In fact some of the luckiest individual who got over 100 acres of land with plant sugar cane ended up reaping off millions o shillings when their cane was harvested by the nearby Chemelil Sugar Company.
These are the same characters and politician who were in August this year were vehemently opposed to the new constitution dispensation, arguing that it will infringe into individuals land. The majority of people apart from the former nominated MP and Moi’s spanner boy Mzee Ezekiel Bargetuny and his family, who ended up with lion’s share, are to-day the same people who sitting in our Parliament. They are the same people who were so vocal about the land distribution and other shallow and hollow agitation and protracted argument about the clauses touching on the land as contained therein the new constitution.
A lot has been spoken about the illegal acquisition of large scale land or farms in this country, but everyone seemed to be keeping silent on what has happened to the Kimwani AD farm in Songhor on the border of Nyanza –Rift Valley Province.
In the same Songhor Valley, a top Kenya technocrat the late Mr Jonathan Owako had bought 1600 acres of a farm previously owned by a white settler. Owako had voluntarily sold half of his farm to groups of local land buying company owned by the local communities He built a magnificent farm house at an estimated cost of Kshs 6 million on the remaining 800 acres.
,But immediately after Mr Owako’s his death, a prominent Nandi politician {Name withheld} who was then one of the untouchable individuals during Moi’s administration, mobilized the Nandis who forcefully moved into Mr Owako’s property and settled on. His magnificent house was turned into a nursery and later a primary school for the new settler.
The unnamed Nandi politician himself slashed the largest portion of the land and converted into his own farm. The family has never been compensated for both the house and the farm, leave alone the close to twenty acres of mature cane and several patches of premature cane which were found on the farm. All were harvested and the money pocketed by the new farmers who had moved into the farm through mob justice.
Protracted legal court battles have followed and all ended up in judgments delivered in favor of the Owako family, but his sons could not move back and settled on the and due to constant threat of physical inhalation.
At one time, a court injunction was obtained by the late Owako’s family and served on Chemelil Sugar Company barring the facility from crushing any sugar cane illegally grown and harvested on the late Mr.Owako’s farm, but the company flagrantly ignored the court orders and continued harvesting sugar cane from Mr Owako’s farm with impunity. The matter is far from being resolved to-date.
Another Luo famer from Nyanza, the ate Mr Walter Fanuel Odede lost close to 2000 acres of prime agricultural land in the Songhor Valley in similar circumstances.
Odede one of the early nationalist and heroes of the struggle for independence who stayed in detention and restriction British colonial camp in the remote Northern Kenya for close to the duration of the State of Emergency was the father in-law of the late Tom Joseph Mboya another architect of political independence in this country.
The Minister for Land Hon James Aggrey Orengo is just sitting on the job. We have not heard him saying anything about the Kimwani ADC Farm in Songh0r, and yet those who had illegally acquired the land and apportioned it themselves are sitting with him in the 10th Parliament. The same people have become of the sung heroes and defenders of the so-called Kalenjin land, perhaps including the stolen ones as well.
In order to silent his critics, the retired President Moi moved to Muhoroni and slashed half of the Muhoroni Sugar Company nucleus estate far,, and after its sub-division distributed small pieces of farms to his political cronies, sycophants and then politically correct Luo surrogates.
TheJ0hnie come late and laxity ridden merry-making new Luo farmers immediately abandoned their ill-gotten farms immediately after harvesting the cane which was planted on land prepared and cultivated by the company at its own cost and minting millions of shillings and vanished away with their lined pockets.
Some of these farm, have since remained fallow, while most of Moi’s right hand men in Nyanza have since sold out or abandoned their ill-gotten farms. This list also read as “Who is who in Luo-Nyanza’ starting with former Permanent Secretaries, judges, administrators and political hirelings. These and many others are some of the impunity which the government must clean up the messes now.
Kenyans are sudden by the new culture of shifting blame on ethnics. Each time my fellow Luo committed a serious criminal offence, and once cornered. Such a person quickly jump into conclusion that “The Luos are being finished” or the subject matter is politically motivated” Witch-hunting are some of the cheapest English vocabulary commonly deployed by politicians in defense of criminal suspect.”
A case in point is the court cases in which the suspended Higher Education Minister is presently a suspect in a criminal case involving the alleged fraudulent sale of forest land at Ngog Hills. Without prejudice, the name if the Prime Minister Raila Odinga has been so common in the lips of the Kalenjin MPs as the person responsible for the Minister’s woes.
Such allegations against Raila Odinga defeats all the logics simply because the alleged offence which has brought Ruto and his other friends before a court of law were committed around 2001. During this period of time, Raila Odinga was nobody in the government of President Moi, but an opposition MP for Lang’ata involved with others in the clamor for the introduction of pluralism system of politics in Kenya. In all fairness, if the Prime Minister is the one instigating Ruto.s prosecution. Who else is responsible for the cases against the three others who are jointly accused with Ruto for the same offence? I am saying that Ruto and his colleagues are merely suspect, because the law says that the accused person becomes an offender after being proved guilty for an offence as charged. Therefore Ruto and his co-accused persons are merely suspects
But Kenya has gone a notch high of even discussing matters which clearly appeared to be even capable of being subjudice matters before the courts for political expediency.
Those blaming Raila Odinga on such issues are just exposing their political naivety and mediocrity. They should learn how to play politics of maturity, but not elementary like the road working gangs.
It is equally good for those who wished to ditch the ODM to do so on their own volition, but they must not hold the party leadership hostage.
If they are men enough, they should have left long ago without making too much fuss or trying to rock the boat from within. They must vacate their elective positions which they won on the ODM tickets and contest the same on other party tickets instead of hanging around making things difficult for the party’s loyal members.
Ruto himself need to tirade carefully because and strategize for his future otherwise he might soon find himself irrelevant even long before 2012.He need the like of Raila Odinga to propel his future presidential ambition, but if he goes on despising every colleague and nursing false notch that the Kalenjin votes are so numerous and can use for power bargain, this could be a pipe dream because he does not own the Kalennin nor is that community out for sale.
Ends
leooderaomolo@yahoo.com