Members of Kogony and Korando Clans have sworn to protect two hundred acres of community land part of which former Premier Raila Amollo Odinga pledged as a donation for the Kisumu Affordable Housing project.
According to the Kisumu Welfare Association the 285-acre parcel of land was donated by the community in 1979 for the construction of a molasses plant.
George Weda, the Kisumu Welfare Association Secretary-general told the media that the two clans of Korando and Kogony ceded the land to the then Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. John Robert Ouko on behalf of the State.
The State was to hold the land in trust for the benefit of the two clans as it developed the molasses plant. At the end of the project, the land was to be given back to the community according to the stipulations of the Land’s Trust Act ( CAP. 288).
According to Weda, when the molasses plant project became unviable and failed in the 1980s the land was to be returned to the community but it wasn’t. Instead in the 1990s Raila Odinga through his company Kisumu Development Trust participated in an auction where the molasses plant’s assets were on the line.
The Raila Odinga family won the auction and took over the assets of the plant. Weda lays emphasis on the assets of the plant and not the land that was the subject of the auction.
“The land belongs to the community. The auction was for the molasses plant, not the Kogony and Korando clans land,” said George Weda, adding “Raila Odinga does not have authority to give out five acres of land that does not belong to him.”
Additional reporting reveals that the molasses plant was a Kenya government project whose objective was to produce power alcohol, an energy fuel out of waste from the sugar production process. It was then called the Kenya Chemical & Food Corporation Ltd, inaugurated in 1977.
It was initially dealt with by three ministries – the Ministry of Finance under Mwai Kibaki and later under Prof George Saitoti, the Ministry for Commerce and Industry under Eliud Mwamunga, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Dr Munyua Waiyaki. The Ministry of Energy, under which the project eventually fell, was created by Moi in 1979, and Biwott was given the portfolio in 1983.
But a row over the molasses plant had been simmering for some time after it had failed to meet expectations. Dr. Robert Ouko who had taken over Foreign Affairs ministry had alleged that there were some of his Cabinet colleagues who were fronting their set of investors in exchange for kickbacks.
Before Dr Ouko was to table a report he had been preparing on the high-level corruption that was hindering the revival of the molasses plant, he was assassinated and his charred remains found at Got Alila, near his Koru home.
Moi interfered with the commission of inquiry on Ouko’s death after the then powerful cabinet minister Nicholas Biwott was mentioned to have had a role in Ouko’s murder. The plant was auctioned and either bought or transferred to Spectre International, a company run by the Raila family.
The land (240acres) was then handed over to the Odinga family firm by President Moi, through Lands commissioner Sammy Mwaita just five days after KANU and Raila’s party, NDP , entered into a partnership that eventually led to a merger of the two parties under Mr Moi.
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