8,000 Embakasi ranch shareholders to wait longer for title deeds
Shareholders of the troubled Embakasi Ranching Company will have to wait longer for title deeds as the government strives to clean up their membership register.
Lands Cabinet Secretary Faridah Karoney said the firm, which was registered in 1972, is in a total mess and, for the 49 years of its existence, it has issued only 2,000 title deeds against an estimated 35,000 shareholders.
The ranch was founded by, among others, Kenya’s first President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and the late Kiambu politician Njenga Karume as a dairy and horticulture enterprise, before it transformed into a land-buying and selling outfit.
After widespread complaints of multiple allocations, swapping of owners, overlaps and outright grabbing across a whole decade, President Uhuru Kenyatta in March 2018 ordered the Lands ministry to dissolve the firm and issue title deeds to members.
Integrity challenges
“Since then we have come face to face with the magnitude of the mess that is the ranch. We have strived to right the ranch’s mess and so far we have processed 25,000 title deeds but we are encountering a challenge where our online database is resisting some owing to integrity issues,” Ms Karoney said.
She said the integrity challenges had made it difficult for the ministry to beat the President’s deadline of dissolving the firm and issuing land ownership documents to its members.
“It is a mess that we have to keenly correct and that explains the delay that has persisted. This is a private company, yes, but for the public good we have to find a way to resolving its issues in a decisive way,” she said.
Another hurdle is posed by a power tussle between two factions of the board of directors.
While the ministry recognises the faction chaired by Ms Nyokabi Mathenge, the board registered with the office of the registrar of companies and which holds a CR12 certificate is led by Mr James Njoroge.
A police officer talking to Embakasi Ranching Company Directors Joseph Njenga(left),James Njoroge(in cap) at their offices in Ruai, Nairobi on April 12,2021 where they were arrested by police officers due to leadership wrangles.
The two factions are embroiled in a court battle, but the government opted to work with the side led by Ms Nyokabi in efforts to correct the said mess.
Mr Njoroge has over the past three weeks attempted to forcibly gain entry into the ranch’s offices, for which he was arrested and charged with disturbing peace.
He has remained defiant, arguing that “there is a conspiracy to grab land belonging to the dead, the very aged, the poor and the unclaimed parcels.”
Total ban
To avoid interference, the ministry, through Principal Secretary Nicholas Muraguri, slapped a total ban on all transactions involving the ranch’s 16,000 acres.
So prime is the ranch that Cytonn Investments indicated in a report last year that the value of land there had appreciated by 115 per cent since 2011, with an acre retailing at Sh71 million, up from Sh33 million.
Based on Cytonns calculations, the 16, 000 acres would translate to a total wealth of Sh1.14 trillion.
Kasarani MP Mercy Gakuya said “it is high time the President’s wish to title the land was implemented without any further delay so that the treasure can be utilised to create wealth for the owners.
Ms Gakuya told the Nation she is in full support of the reforms being implemented by the Lands ministry, adding the way the ranch matter was progressing posed an economic and security risk.
Mr Muraguri said the purpose of the transactions’ embargo was to enable the teams validating the records at the ranch to trace all land movements so as to build an accurate and credible shareholders’ register.
“It is after we have processed, registered and awarded all title deeds that we will lift the embargo so that the rightful owners of the parcels can use them for commercial empowerment,” he said. BY DAILY NATION
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