Assessing the performance of anybody, including the past commissioners of the National Lands Commission must be based on their constitutionally prescribed mandate.
We must also examine how they entered into office. First, the commissioners were put in the office on a wrong premise.
Most were compromised candidates or proposed by so and so to do their bidding. Their appointments were hardly based on their professional backgrounds and competence but on the nonsense that is 'reflecting the face of Kenya'.
You can get anybody from any region of this country, East Africa, Africa or globally to be a commissioner so long as they meet professionally set criteria. So, it is only fair that the next commissioners be put in office purely on their competence, professional background and integrity.
This past commission also seemed not to have appreciated their mandate and the circumstances that led to the creation of the commission.
They virtually did nothing to address the problems raised in the historical land injustice reports, from 'Ndung'u' land report to the TJRC. Did they even attempt to audit the leases that were in existence over public lands as required by the law? In fact, instead of addressing the problem, they largely became accomplices of land grabbers, acquiring wealth unjustly.
They spent a large fraction of their time, if not all of it, undermining and fighting each other thus diverting their focus from their key mandate.
The National Lands Commission is an integral state organ that is supposed to preserve the sovereignty of the nation since it is the custodian of our land. But it cannot do this as a stand-alone entity.
The commissioners should have cultivated and nurtured a healthy and proactive working relationship with various state organs. Unfortunately, this past commission fought everyone, including the Ministry of Lands instead of working to nurture trust to enable it to execute its mandate effectively.
Further, the commissioners lost the trust of Kenyans by getting sucked into corruption. Most of them saw the execution of their mandate as an avenue for striking deals and rent seeking. That is why you see every audit report after another indicting them, disavowing their handling of one issue after another.
The CEO of Kenya Land Alliance spoke to the Star
