Nyandarua Deputy Governor Waithaka Mwangi has said the county government has the ability to terminate a case in which former minister Amos Kimunya is charged with allocating government land to a private entity.
Waithaka was responding to the Assembly Committee on Agriculture.
The committee is probing the allocation of 25 acres to Midlands Company.
Operations of the company started to process farm produce have been hampered by the case, prompting its directors to petition the assembly to terminate the case.
Kimunya's case and those of his co-accused are pending at the High Court in Nakuru and Nairobi.
Mwangi said Agriculture executive can swear an affidavit and file it in court, indicating the county has no interest in pursuing the two cases.
The company was started in 2003 after the collapse of Naivasha-based Pan African Vegetable Mills.
Mwangi said former President Mwai Kibaki and former First Lady Lucy Kibaki are shareholders of Midlands.
He said Midlands founders wrote to Kimunya, then Lands minister, requesting allocation of land in Njabini on August 15, 2003.
The land was registered as Nyandarua/Njabini 530 under the name of Settlement Fund Trustee.
“This land never belonged to the Ministry of Agriculture or the Farmers Training Centre before it was allocated. This is just a case tying us up. It has no head or tail, it is not going anywhere. It was a fixation of certain individuals to ruin their political careers, but we don’t need to play politics with an investment like this,” Mwangi said.
He said the director of land adjudication and settlement in Nairobi wrote to her officer in Nyandarua, requesting to know the status of the land in response to the allotment application.
“The Nyandarua officer said the entire land was not being used by FTC and was free for allocation. It was subdivided into two portions and that is how Midlands got 25 acres and left 50 acres to Njabini Farmers Training Centre,” Mwangi said.
One of the company directors, Junghae Wainaina, told the committee most of the company’s work has been suspended.
The factory was to store potatoes, sell raw potatoes, process ready to cook products, dehydrate vegetables, mill food products, convert waste animal feeds and extract
pyrethrine.