Lesson from Cameroon

In a visit to Yaounde, Cameroon, a colleague shared a rather poignant story of how some public officials in one of the regions found themselves either jobless or in jail. The government needed to construct a road through the region. Private land needed to be acquired for the purpose. Public officials subsequently visited the countryside to document the affected private land for ease of compensation. The bigger the size of land affected the more money a farmer would receive! Officials easily went on a spree, striking deals with farmers to sign for greater sizes of land than was affected. And the extra earnings were happily shared.

Unfortunately for all involved, the government later commissioned an audit on the compensation payments. Under interrogation, the farmers sung! They gave details of what happened. That the officers had told them to sign for bigger parcels of land and when paid, they split the proceeds. This provided fodder for the dismissals and prosecution of the implicated officials. Sad how professionalism can be used against the very society it should serve.

Land Compensation challenges in Kenya

We have had challenges with matters compensation too. The constitution rightly calls for the compensation of land rights acquired by the state. If the enabling provision in the Land Act is well implemented, it ensures a win-win for landowners and the state. But when there’s process abuse and fraud, the state, and hence the public, can lose big. The compensation process hangs around land experts, particularly surveying and valuation professionals. Land surveyors should determine and provide advise on land parcel sizes while valuers advise on the value of the subject parcels. While surveying is a specific science, valuation is subjective, but also aided by some guidelines. Therefore, where there are reliable records and professional honesty, the process should be straightforward. But without good records and if driven by greed and self-gain, this process is prone to easy fraud as happened above. What variables make compensation so easily manipulated?

First, the size of land! Any overstatement translates to undeserved public money. Two, the value! If a valuer exaggerates value, they convey undeserved public money to the landowner. Thirdly, team collusion can find compensation paid for public land, or parcels reserved for public use, which otherwise need not be compensated for. Government shouldn’t pay itself! And finally, with collusion, maps can be manipulated to introduce parcels that don’t exist on the ground, against which compensation is paid to ‘proxy’ landowners’. Where land is unsurveyed and unregistered, it becomes even easier to manipulate sizes and ownership. Where land is well surveyed and registered, playing around with value is a better tool.

Unlike in the past, compensation on compulsory land acquisition of land in Kenya has lately invited contention and concern. Many multi-million or billion court cases and the significant, at times disproportionate, cost of compensation in mega projects such as the SGR, LAPSSET, bypasses and the major urban and rural roads provide adequate anecdotes. Experiences with compensation for Thika Road, the expansion of Lang’ata and Outer Ring Roads also come to mind. Currently compensation for land remains a major concern in the LAPSSET corridor and the second phase of SGR, hence causing national and international concern on total project costs. So Kenya must address itself to this challenge.

Need for professional accountability and independent checks

While the proposed legal amendments through the Land Value Index Bill, 2018 intend to introduce predictability of land values across zones and bring in alternative forms of compensation, such as alternative land, government bonds or equity shares, concerns will remain. The lying on land sizes, introducing non-existent land parcels and using proxy speculators calls for different interventions. Good oversight is cardinal. Strict professional accountability by surveyors and valuers, through independent checks or even audits for suspect projects, is helpful. Censure and deregistration by registration boards too. Dismissal, prosecution and refunds of misappropriated sums by those incriminated should be used as deterrent.

Kenya mustn’t allow fraud in compensation to become the newfound avenue for pilfering public funds. The National Land Commission owes the nation a duty in this regard. And Government should ensure tight oversight.