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{
"id": 266337,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/266337/?format=api",
"text_counter": 272,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Dr. Nuh",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 114,
"legal_name": "Nuh Nassir Abdi",
"slug": "nuh-abdi"
},
"content": "Where I come from, you own a piece of land basically by having to fence it off and saying that this is your piece of land. Then two, three or even 15 to 20 years after someone has lived on a piece of land peacefully without any troubles and without having anybody asking him where his title deed and papers are, someone comes with a piece of paper and says that that land is his. With a stroke of a pen in Nairobi, someone who has lived on a quarter acre of land or on a plot of land in Tana River has to vacate where he or she has known for 20, 30, or 40 years. This is the injustice that this Bill has to cure. If it does not, then it is as good as having no Bill at all and no law at all. The process of land registration has been simplified for the elite, those who know the under dealings and those who have the money. It has been made a complicated affair and almost impossible to get for the peasants, for example, from where hon. M. Kilonzo comes from. I do not think they are any better. They are not any better. That is when you have to travel from Tana River for you to have access to a title deed and make several trips to Nairobi. So, the one who lives in Nairobi is better placed to get a title deed for Tana River because he can access the information of the pieces of land and chunks of land through mappings that have been done since Independence. Within ten or 15 minutes in Ardhi House, someone is able to identify a piece of land that has been the property of communities for ages. They may not care to wait for the 20 or 30 years to lapse because after all, that person knows that whenever the time comes he will go and possess that piece of land, again with the support and the machinery of the Provincial Administration, the police and even the courts. When will the person in Tana River appeal against a decision that has been made in a court by merely providing a title deed in a court of law and saying that “I have a piece of land in Tana River and there are squatters who are refusing to vacate the land and I have given notice for the last 30 days”, notice which has not even been given? Then the court will serve orders that these people should vacate the land. The Provincial Administration will not even have an afterthought. They will say that they have been served with a court order and would want to diligently execute court orders when it favours the rich and not when it favours the poor. These are the scenarios that if we do not get this law right, then we are going to fail. If the elite, the ones who are learned, those who have degrees, have been unable to access the information as to be able to determine which piece of land in Nairobi is safe for them to buy, and people have colluded right, left and centre and produced title deeds which almost look excellent on face value, but which again would be disputed by the Ministry concerned that they are fake title deeds, again, when will the peasants and the ignorant in terms of law from Tana River get to know these processes? That is why this process should be simplified. When we were in Mombasa, I remember the Ministry saying that it would want one seal because of uniformity for titles to be issued. For some of us who are advocating that we should have our title deeds signed in Tana River County by a County Registrar and that is final, then maybe the issue of uniformity may not be there. But we do not want our people to be subjected to travelling to Nairobi even if that seal and signature has to be issued in Nairobi. Let the process be simplified such that the person in Hola, Galole, Garsen and Bura, at the nearest office, after satisfying all the regulations and all the law, gets the title deed without any fuss. I want to go on to issues that have to deal with community land and trust lands. I heard my friend and colleague emphasize that the county governments hold the land in trust for the community. The mistrust that has existed between the communities and the county councils that serve them is one that the people are not ready to forget. If county governments are going to behave more or so like the county councils that exist today, then that is when communities will revolt their land being held in trust by anybody else and would only have to entrust on the National Land Commission. I was a proponent of devolution but so much afraid of these issues that are conducted in boardrooms in Nairobi, but again also afraid of my own self that at times our society turns to be a man eat man society. If county governments have to hold community land in trust for such communities, then we have to set the standards through which delineation of such land can be done by the county government and to what level. We need to have a pedestal that we should raise so high for communities to participate maximally, such that the county government again is not faulted for being high handed for ignoring the rights of the communities merely because they have been given land and trust to hold it for the community. That is why although the issue of communities being listed by membership looks a bit odd, but it only becomes the safest way through which such land can be held by communities and disposed of in a manner which they are very much okay with. To conclude, the injustices that have happened on matters of land are ones that have to be dealt with. I know we have concluded the National Land Commission Bill, but I remember a clause that stated that issues of injustices will have to be dealt with immediately two years after the National Land Commission comes in place. For me, even two years is too far. Something that has to begin in earnest is to deal with the injustices that have happened in Coast Province and northern Kenya. Some of the injustices were done by even Government agencies. For example, in the Mines and Geology Department, people would sit here in Nairobi without having to think of whether there are people grazing their animals on such land. They do this without caring whether minerals that would be extracted from this land would disadvantage communities living in those areas. They would issue licences to big mining companies to destroy land. The excavation they do and the manholes they create cause animals and people to suffer and lose livelihoods. This happens just merely because someone in Nairobi decided that an area should be a mine area without consulting the communities. A few consents will be given by some county councils through some corruption modes. When you complain to the Ministries concerned, they would, again, turn a blind eye because they have paid their dues according to how the law stipulates. The few corrupt officials in those higher offices are paid by those companies because they have allowed the process to continue and the peasants suffer."
}