A piece of public land sitting along the busy Kangundo Road in Machakos town is finally back in government hands after years of being held by private developers.
The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) says it has recovered the prime land valued at about Ksh50 million following a court ruling that cancelled the titles issued to private individuals.
The property, slightly under an acre, lies in a fast-growing part of town where land prices have shot up in recent years. For decades, it was intended to serve the public rather than private interests.
According to EACC, the land had originally been set aside for the Ministry of Health to build staff houses. Part of it still hosts a government house currently used by the Sub-County Police Commander.
But somewhere along the way in the early 1990s, two sections were quietly hived off and allocated to private people.
“It was public land. It should never have been sold or transferred in the first place,” an official familiar with the matter said at the site.
Investigators found that the original land, measuring about 1.78 acres, had been split into three portions. One remained public, while the other two now known as Block 1/623 and Block 1/624 ended up in private hands.
One of the owners later surrendered their piece voluntarily. The second portion had to be fought for in court.
EACC filed the case back in 2019, and in January this year, the Environment and Land Court ruled in favour of the government. The judge ordered that the title be cancelled and the land returned to the state.
When officials visited the site this week, EACC’s Director of Legal Services and Asset Recovery, David Too, said the commission is stepping up efforts to reclaim grabbed public property across the region.
He revealed that the agency is currently chasing back assets worth over Ksh363 million in Machakos, Kitui and Makueni counties. Among them are several pieces of land belonging to Kenya Prisons.
For residents, the recovery is being seen as a small but important win in the fight against land grabbing a problem that has denied communities schools, hospitals and other public services for years.
“This land belongs to the public,” Too said. “And that’s where it should stay.”
