Nine years have passed since former President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered the dissolution of the Kihiu Mwiri land-buying company in Murang’a County, which owned 1,285 acres.
The directive mandated that all 6,200 shareholders receive title deeds for free.
This decision followed decades of turmoil within the now over 50-year-old company, which had descended into violence, with directors being assassinated, proscribed gangs taking over security, and politicians and security officers forming land theft cartels.
Most of the original shareholders of Kihiu Mwiri were from Gatundu South and contemporaries of the founding president, Jomo Kenyatta, who was their fellow villager.
Directors Josphat Kibe Nyoike and Zakary Chege Kiratu were murdered on July 7, 2015; Paul Muhuhi Bernard was assassinated on July 28, 2015; and Peter Kimani Kuria was killed on May 10, 2016. More than 10 other officials and shareholders have since disappeared without a trace.
All suspects arrested and charged in connection with the murders have since been acquitted, allegedly due to cartel-influenced miscarriages of justice.
In court proceedings, names of area politicians, administrators, and power brokers surfaced. A security officer was accused of using armed police officers to guard land grabbers as they subdivided and fenced off parcels of land.
It is perceived that the problems facing the company are driven by Murang’a land cartels, supported by government corruption, trying to wrest control of the highly valuable land -where an acre sells for between Sh15 million and Sh28 million - from Kiambu County cartels.
Demonstrating his commitment, President Kenyatta personally visited the area after the violence escalated and shareholders began arming themselves for an all-out war to defend their holdings against organised land grabbers.
“For the sake of peace and the safety of our people, I am ordering all relevant government agencies, coordinated by the Interior CS, to immediately ensure the land is surveyed and title deeds are issued,” President Kenyatta declared.
Hopeful residents, eager to erase the memories of the bloody conflict, proposed renaming the area from Kihiu Mwiri (a knife in the body) to Kenyatta Farm in honour of the president’s intervention.
Today, however, the titling programme has collapsed, with some of the few issued titles turning out to be fake, and cartels launching another wave of land fraud.
State is part of the problem
Last Monday, some shareholders met at Kihiu Mwiri Market and shared their plight with the media. John Mwangi, who coordinates the collection of irregular title deeds for government correction, accused the government of being part of the problem.
“The problem started in 2015 when President Kenyatta ordered the titling programme. The drive was coordinated by the then-Interior CS, Dr Fred Matiang’i. Departments tasked with resolving our issues included crooks who sabotaged the drive and are now stealing our lands,” Mwangi said.
The Lands CS Alice Wahome, Director of Survey Weldon Maritim, former Gatanga MP Nduati Ngugi, current MP Edward Muriu, and local administrators appear clueless about the shareholders’ troubles.
During a July 8, 2024 visit to Murang’a County to launch the digitisation of the area’s land registry, Ms Wahome declined to comment on the Kihiu Mwiri crisis. “Those problems will be resolved by the digitisation programme being rolled out nationwide,” she stated.
Mr Maritim, whose department deployed 100 surveyors to Kihiu Mwiri in 2015 following the presidential order, told Nation on Monday, “Only Ms Wahome knows about this issue.”
Meanwhile, former MP Ngugi blamed delays on the Survey Department, which he claimed only completed its work in 2022, long after his term ended.
“The presidential directive in 2015 had not been concluded by the time I left office. The person who can explain this crisis is Mr Maritim,” Ngugi said.
Ngugi also noted that the Registrar of Titles had taken over Kihiu Mwiri’s management, including the issuance of new title deeds, while canceling previously held titles to facilitate fresh surveys.
In 2021, then-Lands PS Dr Nicholas Muraguri told Nation that titling had stalled due to registry reforms and the Covid-19 pandemic, further delaying the process.
Murang’a Senator Joe Nyutu decried rising cases of land fraud across the county, highlighting Kihiu Mwiri alongside other troubled land cooperatives.
