When President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered in 2015 that Kihiu Mwiri Land Buying Company in Murang'a County be dissolved, surveyed and its members issued with title deeds, the Ministry of Lands made public two rival registers that, combined, had 9,935 shareholders.
The company, known as Kihiu Mwiri Farmers Company Limited, was incorporated in 1970 with the objective of purchasing land for the benefit of its shareholders.
On July 31, 1974, the company acquired LR No 9214, measuring 1,269 acres, which had first been registered on March 1, 1957, and is situated east of Thika Town.
Initially, the company undertook coffee farming, but with a growing list of members, the shareholders resolved to subdivide the land into plots for allocation.
Shareholders of Kihiu Mwiri land buying company in a Nairobi court on September 2, 2015, where they and 10 others were charged with the murder of four directors of the firm. PHOTO | PAUL WAWERU |
However, leadership wrangles erupted and, for years, the company did not update its records with the Registrar of Companies regarding the shareholders' register and the list of directors, leading to several court cases.
By 2015, the company had two rival sets of directors, one with 3,507 members and the other with 6,428 members, bringing the total to 9,935 shareholders.
The last time the company updated its returns to the Ministry of Cooperatives was in 1985, when the share register had 1,423 members. But over the next 30 years, as leadership wrangles persisted and shady dealings continued, the two rival groups expanded the register by 8,512 members.
In Judicial Review Miscellaneous Civil Application No 381 of 2010, the court ordered that an Annual General Meeting be conducted on January 11, 2011.
However, the incumbent directors declined to hand over the office and instead continued issuing share certificates to people who were not part of the principal register.
As the tussle escalated, the legally elected directors were locked out of the company's Gatina Farm headquarters, forcing them to open an office in Thika Town. This led to the high-profile assassinations of some of the elected directors in 2015, while others disappeared without a trace.
Directors Josphat Kibe Nyoike and Zakary Chege Kiratu were murdered on July 7, 2015, Paul Muhuhi Bernard was assassinated on July 28, 2015, while Peter Kimani Kuria was killed on May 10, 2016.
Mourners carry the coffin bearing the remains of Zacharia Chege as he was laid to rest on August 6, 2015 in Maragua Constituency, Murang'a County. Gatanga MP Humphrey Kimani said he would name senior government officials illegally allocated land on the controversial Kihiu Mwiri property.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
The directors who had refused to vacate office went ahead and subdivided the land into seven new parcels: LR No 9214/1, a dam measuring 35.89 hectares; LR No 9214/2, reserved for roads; and LR Nos 9214/3, 9214/5, 9214/6 and 9214/7 measuring 327.8, 51.63, 1.53, 1.535 and 25.99 hectares respectively, registering them under the company's name.
Another parcel, LR No 9214/4 measuring 55.05 hectares, was sold to Breeze Investments Ltd for Sh37.5 million, and a title deed was issued.
The directors also subdivided a 22.5-hectare parcel that was sold to Haverest Limited for Sh25 million, but the transfer was not concluded because there was no shareholders' resolution.
In a 2018 situation report by the Ministry of Lands to the President, then Principal Secretary Nicholas Muraguri wrote that there was no credible shareholder register to guide the titling exercise ordered by President Kenyatta.
In search of a solution, the government sought to reconstruct a guiding register from the three available ones, resulting in a fourth register with 9,555 members. But this fourth register was fiercely contested, with some members staging protest marches to government offices.
Under pressure, the ministry went back to work and came up with a fifth register that drastically reduced the membership to 3,411. It was rejected after 6,137 members signed a petition claiming their land was being stolen.
The exercise, supervised by then Interior Cabinet Secretary Dr Fred Matiang'i, appeared to stall after two years of trying to produce a workable register.
What followed, according to the 2018 Ministry of Lands situation report, was a non-scientific, populist method of ensuring the titling programme benefitted as many people as possible.
"It was decided that all people who appeared in all the five registers be given first priority, followed by those who appeared in four registers, then those in three, two and lastly one register," the report noted.
President Uhuru Kenyatta issues a title deed to Ndung’u Matheri who was among shareholders of Kihiu Mwiri land in Murang’a on September 16, 2015.
Photo credit: File/ Nation Media Group
This method produced a sixth register containing 9,935 members.
But a new challenge immediately emerged over whether the available land could accommodate all those members. Records showed the land available for subdivision was 1,269 acres, less land reserved for public utilities and roads.
Another complication was that some parcels had already been sold to private entities and title deeds issued by the same ministry that President Kenyatta had directed to resurvey the land and issue fresh titles.
In what was perceived as an attempt to avoid reopening the dispute, the ministry announced it would issue title deeds for only 3,798 parcels under the sixth register. More than 6,000 members who had appeared in the various registers were left to pursue petitions, court cases and protests, creating the current crisis surrounding the 2015 executive order that has never been fully implemented.
Now, in 2026, President William Ruto has announced the reopening of the titling process. Lands Cabinet Secretary Alice Wahome announced on June 26 that the government had issued 4,450 title deeds within the company over the past three years.
She made the announcement while issuing 750 title deeds, a move that immediately drew condemnation from Gatanga MP Edward Muriu and Murang'a Senator Joe Nyutu.
"This can only mean that the government is either duplicating title deeds or has created a seventh register that is being used to determine who gets a title deed," Mr Nyutu said.
Mr Muriu demanded to see the survey maps Ms Wahome was using to issue the title deeds, as well as those used in processing the earlier 3,798 titles under President Kenyatta's directive.
Mr Muriu said some people had been issued with title deeds but had no land to show for them, while in other cases, some plots had been allocated to multiple people under one title number bearing different names.
"I want the government not to issue title deeds in playgrounds. It should issue them to members standing on the exact location of the land being titled. The government is playing a dangerous game by issuing titles for even non-existent land and, in some instances, issuing one title to more than one person, sometimes to as many as 20 people," he said.
Defending the government, Ms Wahome said plans were underway to cancel some title deeds that had been procured fraudulently.
She said the government was aware that some title deeds had been acquired fraudulently and would conduct a ground audit to establish the extent of the earlier titling irregularities.
Ms Wahome heightened political tensions when she made remarks linked to the 2027 General Election, having already hinted that she may contest the Murang'a governorship on the ruling United Democratic Alliance ticket.
"I want the people of Murang'a not to allow themselves to be hoodwinked into joining opposition politics. Your governor (Dr Irungu Kang'ata) has decided to take you to Linda Mwananchi (a splinter group of ODM led by Edwin Sifuna and Babu Owino). Stay where I am—in a government that is issuing you title deeds," she said.
Murang'a Governor Irungu Kang'ata.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
Speaking separately, Dr Kang'ata said he would not be drawn into a war of words with Ms Wahome, saying: "I have not been brought up to exchange verbal warfare with the age mates of my parents."
Mr Nyutu accused the government of avoiding the root cause of the Kihiu Mwiri titling dispute and instead playing dangerous politics with the issue.
"The government should first confront the cartel comprising senior government officials, rogue security officers, politicians and brokers who grabbed shareholders' land before hijacking the titling process," he said.
He said fresh investigations should establish how the company ended up in such a mess, arguing that there is no established formula for identifying bona fide shareholders, authentic survey maps and the total acreage available for allocation.
Mr Nyutu said the haphazard preparation of the registers lacked integrity safeguards, resulting in genuine shareholders being removed while share certificates were altered, even as the total acreage available for titling remained unclear.
The senator added that the final beneficiaries' register was arbitrarily constituted through a harmonisation process that lacked oversight.
Mr John Mwangi, a director who survived two assassination attempts, said the final 2018 titling report resolved that anyone claiming more than one plot would be limited to a single allocation.
"That one plot was fixed at a quarter of an acre, while those outside the share register who presented valid documents were to receive an eighth of an acre. That was the titling mismanagement that ensued and which today defines the poison in Kihiu Mwiri Company, 11 years after President Kenyatta attempted to intervene and which President Ruto is making worse," he said.
