Governor Mike Sonko has mockingly asked the Nairobi Metropolitan Services director-general to speedily reclaim public land in South C where a private developer is building a mall.
“Being silent is not being foolish. I have just seen some busybodies trying to play bad politics and blame games on the grabbed Highridge public hospital land and other grabbed public utilities in Westlands constituency,” Sonko tweeted on Tuesday.
The grabbed South C land is in Mugoya estate and was earmarked for the construction of an ECDE centre/children’s playground.
“They should also go to South C where a businessman from Northeastern is constructing a mall on county land earmarked for a nursery school and public playground,” the governor said.
Sonko claimed that some Nairobi leaders were playing bad politics on grabbed utilities.
His tweet came a day after NMS director-general Mohammed Badi stopped the construction of a building on the grabbed Highridge Dispensary land, Parklands in Westlands constituency.
Badi was accompanied by area MP Tim Wanyonyi and MCA Jayendra Malde.
The developer was ordered to leave as the NMS boss pledged that the plot will revert to the Ministry of Health by next week.
“This is now public land. Any private developer found here should be arrested and prosecuted. We cannot continue having a system where some individuals think they are greater than the law and the state,” Badi said.
“This is a warning to private developers that this is just the start and if you know you are a land grabber then start packing as it will not be business as usual.”
Wanyonyi accused City Hall “cartels” of protecting the private developer who had grabbed the land to put up a commercial building.
The South C land saga dates back to May 2014 when Sonko, as the Nairobi senator, alerted the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission that a former county employee was attempting to grab it.
Mugoya residents, through representative Catherine Njiru, wrote to the EACC calling for investigations, but “the EACC is yet to do so”, according to the governor.
