The Government should urgently repossess all riparian land

 

Much as the forced displacement of people who have settled along riparian land in Nairobi is painful to those being forced out, it is a necessary measure to make right mistakes that have been made over the years due to poor leadership. No settlement should be allowed on riparian land. Period. One of the main reasons for this is now plain for all to see. Water follows its natural drainage course no matter what may have been erected along natural waterways. Obviously, the heavier the rainfall the more forceful the water and the more damage it causes, the most serious of which is unnecessary loss of human life.

Time has, therefore, come for Kenya’s leadership to determine how much distance from a water body should be considered riparian land based on expert advice. Once this is done, this land must be left unsettled and allowed to regenerate naturally and human settlement or cultivation permanently prevented. Current measures being taken to remove people from riparian land in Nairobi and other counties must, therefore, be supported.

However, the governments (National and counties) must not stop there. They should examine the circumstances of the evictees and treat each case according to its merit. For example, one would hope that somebody who grew up in the streets may not have claim to any ancestral land anywhere in Kenya. For such cases, the Government might be under some obligation to provide land for such landless people as part of its fulfilment of its Constitutional obligation under the Bill of Rights.

The Chapter on the Bill of Rights provides for enjoyment of economic and social rights under Article 43 on aspects relating to health, adequate food and acceptable quality of housing, clean water, social security and education. Clearly, it may not be practical to satisfy all those deserving of full enjoyment of all these rights, given prevailing levels of poverty and limitation of resources. However, the Government cannot run away from the reality of what, to many, appear to be misplaced priorities. Those that come to mind include plans to appoint more than 50 Chief Administrative Secretaries and allocation of millions of shillings of offices of First and Second ladies, among many others that would seem to add minimal value to national development.

As far as conservation of riparian land goes, it has not always been like this. Since colonial times, protection of riparian zones and maintenance of buffer zones between water bodies and settled and cultivated land was strongly enforced well into the early 1980s. Stringent enforcement of those protections would appear to have waned during and following the long reign of second President, Daniel Arap Moi. The only time positive signals about preservation of riparian areas generally, and the Nairobi River basin specifically, was during the short period when Hon. John Michuki was Environment and Natural Resources Minister between 9^th January 2008 and 21^st February 2012. By the end of Michuki’s tenure, the Nairobi River had been cleaned up and the John Michuki Memorial Park established in the area between Globe Cinema Round About and the National Museum headquarters. The beautiful Park to date remains a testimony to this sterling solo effort by the late no-nonsense Minister.

One appreciates that the fact that the National and county governments are headed by politicians creates a fundamental obstacle that would prevent politicians from taking unpopular but necessary decisive actions such as forcefully removing people who have illegally settled on riparian land. To a politician, such people constitute a large chunk of the voting population. In a sense, therefore, evicting them might minimise chances for their re-election back into office.

That is why the idea of an independent commission, such as the Nairobi River Commission that was set up by President William Ruto in December 2022 was viewed as a good non-partisan route to address the problem of cleaning up the Nairobi River. The President subsequently placed the Commission under the Office of the Deputy President, HE Rigathi Gachagua. However, save for the having grabbed headlines when the appointed Commissioners were sworn in in February, 2023, little has been heard about its activity or plans to get on with job for which the body was appointed.

The present effort by the Government to remove illegal settlements on riparian land in Nairobi and elsewhere, though a knee-jerk reaction triggered by the current flooding, presents a good opportunity for this Commission. Should they seize it, it would ensure that the process is carried out in a systematic and humane manner and in a way that ensures that the country’s riparian areas are conserved. This way, the heavy death toll and destruction resulting from flooding will largely be a thing of the past. For this to happen, all stakeholders under the leadership of the National Government must commit themselves and their resources to the efforts and totally divorce them from politics.