Jirongo, squatters, CBK in battle over Sh7bn Ruai land

Politics and policy

Former Lugari MP Cyrus Jirongo. CBK wants to auction Jirongo's land over a Sh20 billion loan he allegedly owes it. PHOTO | FILE  

By BRIAN WASUNA, bwasuna@ke.nationmedia.com

In Summary

• A group of squatters under Ruai Embakasi Youth United Development Organisation wants the High Court to nullify Mr Jirongo’s title deed and declare it the valid owner of the 1,000-acre piece of land.
• The land is at the centre of another case between the former Lugari MP and the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK).
• The CBK wants to auction the land to recover a Sh20 billion loan M Jirongo took from Postbank Credit Limited (now in liquidation) in 1993.

Former Cabinet minister Cyrus Jirongo’s fight to retain ownership of a 1, 000 acre piece of land in Nairobi’s Ruai area has taken a new turn after a group of squatters laid claim to the prime property valued at Sh7 billion.

The land, owned by Mr Jirongo’s Offshore Trading Company, is at the centre of another case between the former Lugari MP and the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK).

The CBK wants to auction the land to recover a Sh20 billion loan M Jirongo took from Postbank Credit Limited (now in liquidation) in 1993.

Court papers indicate that Offshore charged the land as part security to help to Sololo Outlets, another firm owned by Mr Jirongo, to acquire Sh1 billion loan – a debt that has climbed to Sh20 billion as a result of high interest rates that prevailed in the 1990s and that have compounded over the years.

Interest rates on bank loans rose to as high as 30 per cent between 1990 and 1998.

In the new twist, a group of squatters under Ruai Embakasi Youth United Development Organisation (Reyuda) wants the High Court to nullify Mr Jirongo’s title deed and declare it the valid owner of the massive tract of land.

The squatters hold that they have occupied the land since 1993, and that they have since developed it considerably. Mr. Jirongo claims that he was extorted Sh1 million by one of the squatters’ leaders to have the case dropped.

Ruai area has some of Nairobi’s most convoluted land divisions with many cases of double allocations, squatter-dumping by politicians into private properties, and invasion and acquisition of Settlement Fund Trustee (SFT) land by grabbers.

READ: Jirongo stops CBK from selling his Sh7bn Ruai land

It is this mishmash that the High Court will try and unravel. In its court papers, the squatter group claims to have been in continuous and exclusive occupation of the land since 1993 without any interference.

“Since 1993 Reyuda has carried out significant developments on the land in the form of residential houses, a school, a health facility and a police station,” the organisation says.

Under Kenyan law, a citizen can be declared the valid owner of a piece of land if they have occupied it for more than 12 years without any opposition.

The squatters say they have enjoyed occupation of the land for 22 years, and should now be declared its valid owners.

The squatters insist that Mr Jirongo has never legally raised issue with their occupancy of the land, but that he has on occasion used armed goons to scare them off the property.

Mr Jirongo has, however, denied the allegations that he has on occasion hired thugs to evict the squatters, and says that a section of Reyuda officials led by one Frederick Chege Mwangi swindled him of Sh1 million in an attempted out-of- court settlement.