The Kenyatta International Convention Centre, Nairobi County in this picture taken on December 4, 2023.
When the National Assembly ordered Lands CS Alice Wahome to table the Kenyatta International Convention Centre’s (KICC) title deed before one of its committees within 30 days, a strong waft of irony filled the room.
Public Investments Committee on Governance and Education chairperson David Pkosing led the heated February 29 session intended to verify whether land adjacent to the KICC has been irregularly allocated.
The watchdogs looking into title deeds of its neighbour also have no ownership documents for the land they occupy.
Parliament Buildings is one of hundreds of critical government installations that do not have title deeds for thousands of acres across the country, a situation that has exposed taxpayers to the risk of losing land or paying private firms billions of shillings in compensation.
In an extension of the irony, the Supreme Court building, the Judiciary’s most iconic physical structure where numerous cases on land ownership have been settled, also sits on property without a title deed.
When former Chief Registrar of the Judiciary Anne Amadi appeared before the National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee in 2019, she revealed that the title deed for Kenya’s busiest court – the Milimani Law Courts – is in the name of the Income Tax Department.
Ms Amadi, however, said that the Judiciary was working to secure title deeds for its land. The ownership document is yet to be processed, alongside those of thousands of other government institutions.
In May, 2023 the Ministry of Lands completed transfer of a piece of land in Kisumu worth Sh1 billion back to Judiciary. The land was excised illegally in 1994 by a former magistrate, who was at the time in charge of the Kisumu Law Courts.
The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) won a case filed against individuals who bought the land from the former magistrate.
Over the years, State House, the Judiciary, police and several public schools have been entangled in legal battles over land they occupied without ownership documents, as individuals purporting to own the assets emerged from the woods with seemingly genuine title deeds.
A task force led by former Chief Justice David Maraga aimed at spearheading police reforms has also heard that only 159 police stations, out of more than 3,000, have title deeds for the property they occupy.
Another 468 police stations have letters of allotment.
In September 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that letters of allotment are not a title deed and cannot be equated to the latter, which is the ultimate ownership document.
In her report for the 2021/22 financial year, Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu also noted that more than 80 per cent of police stations do not have title deeds.
Just a year earlier, Ms Gathungu reported that six pieces of land owned by the Kenya School of Government in Lower Kabete and which are worth Sh1.6 billion, had been illegally hived off and allocated.
There are no title deeds for the six parcels, whose grabbing was only revoked by a High Court order.
That top institutions lack ownership documents points to a larger problem within government, as several prime parcels of public land have been left at the mercy of grabbers.
More than 20,000 public schools across the country do not have title deeds, with several instances of encroachment reported.
The push to get title deeds for all public schools started in 2016 during President Uhuru Kenyatta’s first term. President Kenyatta in 2019 ordered that title deeds for all public schools be urgently processed.
More than a year since President Kenyatta finished a second term, there is not much movement.
Successive governments have attempted to process title deeds for government institutions following a spike in land grabbing, but the initiatives have largely registered slow progress.
Lands PS Nixon Korir said that initially, gazetting specific land parcels as public utilities was enough, and served the same purpose of a title deed.
But the insatiable appetite of some unscrupulous individuals has made it necessary to issue title deeds, the PS added.
"Initially what used to happen was that a gazettement of the land was sufficient. Once it was gazetted as a public land, it could not be allocated unless it was degazetted. But because of what's happening now, we (Lands ministry) formed a committee to do the titling of public utilities. We have processed title deeds for over 10,000 schools, police stations and others," Mr Korir said.
"This is a live thing. Society is changing and people are going after everything. That's why we are doing the titling now," he added.
Cases that the Department of Defence (DoD) has defended in court for several years show why titling of government parcels has become paramount.
The Supreme Court in September 2023 thwarted an attempt by Torino Enterprises to get Sh1.5 billion as compensation for land hosting the Embakasi Barracks that the private firm claimed ownership.
Torino Enterprises had won a High Court case, whose outcome was reversed by the Court of Appeal and, later, the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court noted that the DoD has never processed a title deed for the property, which judges held is owned by the Nairobi County government.
In August 2023, the National Assembly heard that lack of title deeds has also affected development plans by schools, which are unable to secure county government approvals for construction without valid ownership documents.
“I have a case of a school in Moiben within the municipality referred to as Chebarus Primary. Teachers are supposed to get enhanced allowances for teachers operating within a municipality. But the teachers in this school have never benefited because their school is not registered and does not have a title. I think the Ministry should do due diligence,” Moiben MP Phylis Bartoo said in a Parliamentary sitting on August 8, 2023.
Her Bumula counterpart Wanami Wamboka added that most technical and vocational education and training (TVET) centres do not have title deeds for property they own.
Mathari National Teaching and Referral Hospital, the country’s biggest psychiatric services provider, also lacks a title deed for the 34.3 acres it sits on.
The hospital in 2021 wrote to the Ministry of Health after a private developer encroached on a section of its land.
