She was speaking shortly after she addressed journalists at Lang’ata Road Primary School, where she was overseeing the demolition of the perimeter wall put up by the alleged grabber.
Ngilu came under more pressure yesterday, this time from Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaissery, who gave her and National Land Commission chairman Muhammad Swazuri until last evening to name the individuals be- hind the grabbing of the Lang’ata Road Primary School playground.
“Ngilu and Swazuri must tell Kenyans by the end of the day who the grabbers are. If not, there will be consequences,” he said. Nkaissery issued the ultimatum when he addressed the media soon after he represented the President at the official opening of the 5th Ordinary Session of the Forum of Parliaments of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region.
Ngilu made the name-and-quit threat even as she made a passionate appeal to the President not to sack her. A chastened Ngilu told Kenyatta to give her and Swazuri time to demonstrate they can carry out their mandate.
Ngilu said though the President was agitated by the events on Monday, it was not right for him to harshly con- demn them for sleeping on the job – on national television.
Insiders yesterday told the Star that a furious Kenyatta called the director general of the National Youth Service, Nelson Githinji, on Tuesday night and directed that NYS be deployed immediately at the controversial playground to demolish the wall and flatten the land for the children to play.
Githinji complied immediately and dispatched a battalion of servicemen and women with heavy machinery, in- cluding bulldozers, excavators and tippers.
They had done substantial work by 6am yesterday. NYS will also fence the school. Yesterday, a fuming Ngilu said “the same faces who had grabbed Lang’ata Road Primary School land had also grabbed another piece of land at the entrance of Wilson Airport”. She directed the demolition of a perimeter wall erected around disputed land allegedly owned by the Presbyterian Church of East Africa in Westlands, opposite the Westgate Shopping Mall.
Ngilu said the plot was demarcated as wetland, “which should be preserved and protected at all costs”. She said a park will be built there and named after the late environmentalist and Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai. Ngilu ordered developers on Processional Way, near State House, and the Kibagare River Valley in Lower Kabete to clear their materials and equipment from the sites before bulldozers move in. She said demolition will also take place in Mombasa, Nakuru, Naivasha and Kisumu’s Dunga Beach, wherever public land has been encroached on. Swazuri said, “Grabbers liaise with the National Environment Management Authority to hand our courts wrong, fake and forged documents to obtain court orders.”
As we went to press, the chairman of the Transition Authority, Kinuthia Wamwangi, issued a press release in which he directed that “All County Assets Committees led by County Transition Coordinators convene with immediate effect to urgently take inventory of all land and assets belonging to Early Childhood Education, Primary, Second- ary, Youth Polytechnic and Tertiary in- stitutions.”
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