Government houses on Woodley estate, Nairobi, were unlawfully sold to individuals by the defunct Nairobi City Council.
This is according to the High Court. The 85.572-acre Joseph Kang’ethe estate in Woodley, Nairobi, is estimated to be valued at Sh75 million.
Justice Samson Okong’o of the Environment and Land Court yesterday said the process of granting the lease to the property was fundamentally flawed, hence illegal. He said the property was not lawfully acquired as the lease was a product of an illegal process. Okong'o directed the lands registrar to cancel the original lease instrument and certificate.
Following an investigation into the illegal and irregular allocation of Woodley (Joseph Kang'ethe) estate by the City Council of Nairobi, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, then Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission, had moved to court and obtained temporary orders for preservation of the estate to prevent further dealings.
The estate comprises 103 properties. It was originally owned by the Nairobi City Council under a grant for purposes of building houses on rental for residents. The council, which was then run by a commission, purported to allocate the houses/plots to individuals — government officials, their relatives, politicians and their cronies — at a premium of Sh1.1 million. None of the allottees paid for the plots.
The commission then sought to recover the property. The commission filed 40 recovery suits between 2007 and 2008. The cases were consolidated on February 23, 2015.
