Team queries NIS role in land matters
Members of the National Assembly yesterday raised concern over the move by the Ministry of Lands to involve the National Intelligence Service (NIS) in the digitisation of land registries.
The legislators, who sit in the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), sought to know whether the ministry used money from the exchequer to get the services of the NIS yet it is a public entity.
Led by the committee chair Opiyo Wandayi, the legislators, who include Wilberforce Oundo (Funyula), Aden Duale (Garissa Township) challenged Lands PS Nicholas Muraguri, who had appeared before them to respond to audit queries relating to the 2018/19 financial year, to come clean on the reasons why they required NIS officers to carry out the exercise yet they have competent staff.
“NIS being a public figure was drawing money from the exchequer. We are aware that recently the ministry spent close to Sh200 million in the last financial year, now again we are here and we have learnt that you have paid more money, please tell us what is going on,” said Wandayi.
Oundo said he was shocked to learn that the ministry spent more than Sh70 million on NIS.
“Just tell us that you needed the NIS to police yourself and the ministry staff so that you finish the work that you had not finished,” said Oundo.
Security issue
Their sentiments came after Auditor General Nancy Gathungu in her audit report for the financial year 2018/19 revealed that although during the year under review, the Ministry received Authority to Incur Expenditure (AIE) amounting to Sh73 million from the Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology, State Department for ICT for development of Land Information Management System (LIMS), the amount received on June 28, 2019 and credited to the ministry’s deposit account was later paid to NIS on August 2, 2019 for digitisation of land registries.
But in his reply, Muraguri defended the use of NIS officials saying they were brought in together with other arms of government in the security sector, the ICT sector and the office of the Attorney General to help them streamline land issues in the country.
He said there was need to once and for all to clean up the land sector as efforts to do so previously had not been successful.
National security issues around land are big. We collaborated with NIS to ensure mistakes of the past are cleared,” said Muraguri.
