In our ongoing series on how fraudulent land compensation claims are facilitated through the National Land Commission, Kurunzi News reveals how the value of the land was inflated through post-valuation manipulation of the inspection report.
Official documents in our possession reveal that the initial valuation report for the land tallied with the one by the Ministry of Lands but the figures were changed before the report was submitted to the commission plenary for approval. Ardhi House had valued the land at KSh610 million.
At the center of this saga is the commission’s director of valuation – Joel Ombati Nyamweya, who joined the NLC some time in August 2025.
Kurunzi News understands that Ombati, who was appointed “during the lameduck period of the then outgoing commission”, replaced Dorca Buyaki, who had proved difficult to work with due to her hard stance on this and many other controversial projects.
The process was started following a letter from Labour Cabinet Secretary Alfred Mutua addressed to then chairman of the NLC Gershom Otachi, who in turn directed the valuation sub-committee to process the compensation through an “extremely urgent” memo dated 8 May 2025.
Dirty technical job
“She had to go because some of the outgoing commissioners really wanted some projects approved for compensation so that they could get their kickbacks out of it and she was not playing ball,” said our source.
“He (Ombati) was brought in as an accomplice of those commissioners so that he can do the technical dirty job that Dorca (Buyaki) and many other technical people at the secretariat had refused to do since 2019.”
The initial inspection report was prepared by Peter Kaunda, a senior valuer at the NLC, who is said to have declined to manipulate the figures.
“After submitting his report, Ombati changed the figures to the KSh731.6 million figure and asked (Peter) Kaunda to sgin but he refused,” the source told Kurunzi News.
“Ombati went ahead and edited the report to suit their interests and signed it for the committee’s approval. And because this was already a collusion by him and Commissioner (Alister) Murimi, it was approved and sent to the plenary of the commission.”
Murimi chaired the commission’s valuation and taxation sub-committee, which is responsible for processing the valuation reports before tabling them at the full commission.
“The commissioners were all aligned that they wanted to push this through and Alba (Petroleum) before they left office so it had to be. That is why Ombati had to sign the vakuation report even when he had nothing to do with it.
“None of the commissioners can claim innocence or ignorance about this scheme. They knew they were going so they didn’t care as long as they were going to make money.”
“Edited” valuation report
According to the commission’s procedure, the director in charge of valuation is only a conveyor belt between the secretariat and the valuation committee of the commission. The director is only required to forward the valuation report signed by the valuer that conducted the inspection of the property.
However, in this case, Ombati opted to take ownership of the valuation report “after editing” because the valuer refused to sign against figures that he did not arrive at.
“There is no way the valuation discrepancy would be that big and any valuer worth their salt will certainly arrive at figures that are within the acceptable discrepancy limit and in they will have their reasons explaining why the disparity is there,” our source states.
Despite mounting pressure, Kaunda insisted that he would only append his signature to the report that reflected the KSh600 million figure and nothing else.
“That is why Ombati decided to go ahead because the commissioners were living on borrowed time. Remember, the hiring of the new commissioners had been the subject of a court process so they had to push the payments before leaving.”
Questions still linger as to why commissioners that were on their way out would hurriedly make approvals on land compensation where there was no clarity of ownership, and worse still, approve amounts that were clearly inflated and way out of the acceptable limits.
This is just but one of the many cases that testify to the systemic fraud at the NLC that has seen billions of taxpayer monies paid out in fictitious land compensation claims.
KSH.11 Billion plus valuation fraud exposes land compesation scandals
