Speaker JB Muturi now realizes the idea of ordering Woman Rep Fatuma Gedi to table evidence of Ruto land thefts which are all over the country was a terrible mistake. They should have known that finding evidence of Ruto land thefts is the easiest thing one can do.
There are court records and rulings in the notorious case where Ruto grabbed land belonging to Mr. Adrian Muteshi whom he must have presumed was killed during the 2007/8 post-election violence.
I mean just the nerve and cruelty to grab 100 acres of land from a possible victim of murder. When the person turns up alive you refuse to hand over the land and the matter goes to court for years and the court finally forces you to hand over the land he grabbed to Mr. Muteshi and pay him Shs. 5 million compensation for keeping his land illegally for six years.
That is less than Shs. 1 million a year for a 100-acre land in which you can make Shs. 20 million a year.
Adrian Muteshi died sometime after that court ruling.
They finally killed Muteshi by dragging him through the courts for years but Ruto could not keep his stolen land. They got the man but not the land.
The Ruto land theft case from Muteshi had a ruling in 2013, six years since January 2018 when he stole the land belonging to the 70-year-old farmer who told the court that before the land was grabbed, his farm workers were beaten and thrown out of their own houses in the land after he had escaped with his life. The land grabbers wanted everybody out of there and they achieved it with violence against his workers.
So when an MP brings a full load of evidence of land grabbing by Ruto, his supporters freak out and start yelling and screaming so that the evidence cannot be delivered to parliament. These juvenile Ruto dancers who are MPs were stupid enough to demand that evidence be provided about Ruto land theft. They thought they were doing their boss a favour. That is the problem with stupidity.
Often you don’t know the implications of what you are doing even when you think you are doing a wonderful job. The new Kenya Kwanza boy in parliament, Justin Muturi who is the Speaker of the House seeing the heat coming in as MP Gedi provides evidence then manufactures an excuse to suspend any parliamentary proceedings.
Muturi must have been scared to death that his boss would kill him for letting incriminating evidence of his massive land theft be released in parliament.
Read: How do we end Grand Theft by politicians in Kenya?
Now if we had any credible media in our country they would be going after Gedi’s evidence.
Let the MP release her evidence to the media and hopefully, Ruto will not stop the media from providing it to the Kenyan public.
Kenyans should appeal to MP Gedi to provide that evidence to the public and Ruto can do whatever he wants after that.
Now that the evidence parliament ordered Gedi to bring is available, Muturi and UDA campers will not stop it from being out in public.
They can close parliament as long as they want but this stuff is now out of their control. That evidence is now in safe hands. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker and Mr. Ichungwa who demanded evidence be provided in parliament.
If Muturi follows Ruto’s orders to suppress the evidence they cannot stop other MPs from taking the matter up either at the committee level or with the public. Kenyans want to know what is in that suitcase as soon as possible. This is what is called unplanned consequences of desperate actions.
The truth of the matter is that after the Speaker demanded Gedi provide the evidence of what she said in parliament the MP would have been in a lot of trouble if she failed to do so. Muturi would have been thrilled to get her punished for making allegations in parliament which she could not prove.
When the MP told parliament that she will provide the evidence in two days, Mr. Muturi himself was wondering why she wants to provide that evidence in two days. The speaker thought she was giving herself very little time. Obviously, as soon as the order for evidence was issued, Muturi realized he was putting his UDA boss in a deep hole over which he may have no control.
There are pending land grabbing cases everywhere from Eldoret where Ruto faces a case of grabbing public land and buildings in the town.
He tried to use the National Land Commission (NLC) to allow him to keep property worth billions and the courts ruled a few months ago that NLC has no jurisdiction over the stolen property in Eldoret. That case is coming before the courts and the ruling about it is in the public domain. MP Gedi must have had that case in her suitcase of papers.
Ruto has the Weston Hotel mega land theft from the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA). In the KCAA saga, Ruto tried to use the NLC again which he claimed made a ruling that he just needs to pay compensation and can keep the land. KCAA refused and the matter is before the courts as we speak.
The details of the latest ruling on Weston Hotel land are pretty frightening if you are William Ruto.
The Court of Appeal ruling by Justice Benard Eboso in March 2021 was that the direction by the NLC that Ruto can just compensate the KCAA over the land was not binding and was irrelevant because it is up to the holder of the title deed to decide which way to go. The Court of Appeal gave KCAA full authority to pursue the matter in court.
Read: Bottoms -Up theft now official Ruto UDA Policy
A desperate Ruto then appealed the ruling by Justice Benard Eboso claiming they were dissatisfied with the ruling which allows a petition by the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) to proceed for hearing.
As of right now, the matter is before the Environment and Land Court which has jurisdiction to hear the case, and that the NLC decision was not binding. To make things worse for Ruto, Justice Eboso in his ruling noted that NLC itself acknowledged that it lost its mandate to revoke titles under section 14 of the NLC Act and that it can only give recommendations and advisories for alternative dispute resolutions (mediation) or to courts for arbitration.
Here is the big deal on both cases in Eldoret and Nairobi. Ruto had argued that the NLC has the right to revoke title deeds and that is why they revoked the title deed held by the government in Eldoret and also revoked the title deed held by the KCAA on the land he grabbed.
So Ruto grabs the land, goes to the NLC, and asks them to revoke the title deed from the previous holder and then he just pays some compensation. The courts have now ruled the NLC has no such authority and NLC has also acknowledged that whatever they say about such issues is just some idea on how to find solutions without going to court, but land owners have the final authority on which way they want to solve such problems of land grabbing.
Simply put in the Weston Hotel case, it is up to KCAA to decide whether they will go to court or seek an alternative resolution of the matter. If you are Ruto you know by now that KCAA is not going to help you grab their land.
If the courts once again rule that NLC has no jurisdiction to give Ruto stolen land and order the land be returned to KAA it will be his worst nightmare because technically, his Weston Hotel buildings will be subject to demolition just like the government has demolished buildings in Mukuru which the court ruled were grabbed from the rightful owners.
When people see William Ruto go crazy to become Kenya’s next president they have to understand what is at stake for him.
The courts are going to crush him like a pinata and take the stolen properties back. His only hope is that if he becomes the president he can use his presidential powers to keep his stolen properties. Ruto’s bottom is on fire over stolen land and that is why he talks about bottom up innuendos.
Adongo Ogony is a Human Rights Activist and a Writer who lives in Toronto, Canada
