Ever since the Embakasi Ranching Company Limited was established in 1976 by the founding father of the nation, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, and some of his cronies, serving as its chairman was considered a delegated executive power until the occupants of the office started dying.
The chairmen were Mr Muhuri Muchiri (1976-2006), Mr Kariuki Mwaganu (2006-2009), Mr Mwangi Thuita (2010 to 2018) and Mr James Njoroge (2019 to 2023).
Interestingly, all four chairpersons died suddenly and their autopsies revealed that they had succumbed to heart attacks - a classic case of Sanchez's reggae song Never Dis Di Man, in which he states that "you could be living this minute, the next minute you are gone".
This is perhaps the ultimate fate of being appointed chairman of the ranch— a high-stakes business that controls swathes of prime land worth nearly Sh2 trillion.
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"The position of chairman comes with a lot of challenges and it is like being jinxed. You are appointed by the shareholders to be the custodian of their legacy. But cartels in high places in government have stolen that legacy. The chairman is always in a delicate balance - serving the source of his authority and surviving the threat of the thieves, while at the same time scheming to benefit," says Mr Joseph Njenga, a board member at the ranch.
As the cartels tussled with shareholders, the wars eventually attracted the interest of State House, and presidents Daniel Moi, Mwai Kibaki, Uhuru Kenyatta and the current William Ruto were all dragged into the Embakasi land conflicts.
Three chairmen have died fighting for a combination of personal and cartel interests, wars that even involved sitting heads of state.
The ugliest confrontation was between Thuita Mwangi and Kenyatta in 2018, when he defied the president's order to dissolve the ranch and title its shareholders.
The two were to engage in a series of public spats, with the president insisting on the titling programme and even introducing it, and Mr Thuita defying, saying the ranch was a private company.
A director of the Embakasi Ranching Company, Mr Henry Wamba (left), shows a fake land allocation certificate to members during an event to allocate plots to shareholders in Ruai .
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
In August 2018, Mr Thuita collapsed and died in a dingy room in a Ruai bar.
In 1978, Mr Muhuri Muchiri, who was chairman of the ranch and a town councillor, was jailed for five years by magistrate Fidhussein Abdulla after being convicted of stealing coffee while travelling along Malaba to Mombasa.
"Being close to President Jomo Kenyatta, with whom he founded the ranch, and a friend of the State House inner circle, Mr Muchiri never imagined he could be jailed for exercising extreme impunity," said former Provincial Commissioner Joseph Kaguthi.
Mr Kaguthi said the ranch became a highly political entity where raw power was peddled from State House as powerful figures sought to get a piece of the action.
He added that Mr Muchiri had forged a strong friendship with the former chairman of the Gikuyu, Embu and Meru Association (Gema), Mr Njenga Karume, who was also a founder member of the ranch.
The two, says Mr Kaguthi, were able to persuade Mzee Kenyatta to abandon the ranch's original plan - as a horticulture and dairy farm - and turn it back into a land-buying and selling company.
As the stakes grew, the pressure from the grabbers intensified and Muchiri's chairmanship became a hot furnace and he began avoiding his palatial 100-acre home in Kiambu County and instead, as paranoia took hold, spent random nights in various city lodgings.
In May 2006, he was found dead in the accommodation of his bar known as Studio 45.
After his death, Mr Mwangi took over and ran the ranch according to the same script, also suffering from paranoia as he lived a life of avoiding enemies, both real and imagined.
He too began to live in shacks and died in them in 2018, leaving the office vacant.
On 13 April 2019, Embakasi Ranching's shareholders elected a 14-member board with Mr James Njoroge as the new chairman - a move that was confirmed by the Registrar of Companies through the issuance of a CR12 certificate on 20 July 2019.
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Mr Njoroge's travails followed the same script as those of his predecessors, with vested interests haunting him and his peace to the point that he died on 26 August 2023.
"Unlike his predecessors, Mr Njoroge did not die in a dingy accommodation... he died in his rural home in Kabuku village in Kiambu County," said Mr Njenga.
Mr Njenga added that "running the Embakasi cattle ranch is very stressful because there are thieves at every corner who want to steal the best land and kill anyone who gets in their way".
At the time of his death, Mr Njoroge had taken President Ruto to task for what he called the 'illegal commencement of titling of Embakasi land'.
Mr Njoroge's deputy, Ms Phideli Wangari, said "these are acts of God and either way we are all going to die”, so she is “not afraid to take over if given the opportunity", adding that "perhaps the gods will be lenient with the leadership of a woman and use it to bring a lasting solution to this".
A wall fencing the offices of Embakasi Ranching Company Limited in Ruai on February 24, 2021.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
Instead, he wanted President Ruto to revoke 25,000 title deeds that President Kenyatta had issued to shareholders.
According to the ranch's lawyer Timothy Kariuki, when Mr Kenyatta ended his term in 2022, he had ordered that the company be dissolved and title deeds issued to shareholders - a process that saw 25,000 title deeds printed but 11,678 issued.
"This was after 19,000 people on the title deeds list registered disputes, with some complaining of losing some plots to fraudsters while others were slotted in the interiors while claiming their properties were in prime zones," he said.
Mr Kariuki said the move had been carried out without adhering to the rule of law and regulations and without consulting shareholders through their directors.
On 22 August, while in Murang'a County to meet 103 shareholders, Mr Njoroge said the Kenyatta regime had planned to issue 50,000 title deeds against the registered 30,306 shareholders, thereby helping more than 19,000 illegal shareholders to get a stake in the ranch.
Five year old Embakasi land case to be resolved out of court
He added that President Ruto was following in the footsteps of his predecessors - from Daniel Moi to Mr Kenyatta - by overlooking the legal process of issuing title deeds.
On 11 July 2023, President Ruto met a cross-section of ranch shareholders and issued 2,100 title deeds, sparking an outcry from Mr Njoroge and his board.
In a terse press release, the board accused President Ruto of "blatantly ignoring the contents of a ruling by Lady Justice Philomena Mwilu (now Deputy Chief Justice) in Civil Case 395 of 2011 where a shareholder Josephine Njeri Gakami, fearing that the ranch had been invaded by bogus shareholders, sought to stop the titling".
According to documents filed by them through their lawyers, on February 15, 2012, Justice Mwilu ruled that "an order of inhibition be and is hereby made against the respondents (Chief Land Registrar and Attorney General), their agents, servants and/or employees...".
The order affected "the subdivision and/or grant of leases on Nairobi/Blocks 105 and 136 (LR Numbers 10904/2 and 12979/2 respectively) pending the determination of this suit".
The ruling also warned that 'any disobedience or failure to comply with the order of the suit will result in criminal consequences for you and any other persons so disobeying and failing to comply'.
The case is still pending in court, which is why Mr Njoroge was against both President Kenyatta and President Ruto ordering that the titles be processed.
