The National Land Commission bank accounts have been frozen with the Commission purportedly owing Senior Counsel Tom Ojienda Sh 397.3 million. The cash-strapped Commission is unable to pay its employees’ salaries.
The Commission’s four bank accounts; two at the Central Bank of Kenya and two at the National Bank of Kenya Hill Plaza branch are impacted by the judgment handed down by High Court Judge Eric Ogola in Eldoret on July 14, 2022.
Due to this, the Commission is unable to facilitate the payment of its 450 attached employees. However, through its acting Chief Executive Officer Kabale Tache, the Commission has now advised the staff to maintain their composure while the matter is being resolved
“No cause for alarm. We have appealed against the order and we have a stay order,” Tache claimed.
The NLC had given Senior Counsel Ojienda the task of defending the Commission in a multi-billion-dollar land dispute before the Eldoret High Court in 2014.
After the Commission refused to comply with the court’s decision of June 15 awarding Prof. Ojienda Sh393.3 million for services rendered to NLC, the court issued the order to attach the overdue debt.
The miscommunication between the two sides started when some of the previous commissioners refused to recognise Ojienda’s validity and the fact that the Commission had given Ojienda the correct orders to represent it.
Due to this, the lawyer obtained court orders requiring payment, which the Commission disregarded.
Despite several attempts by Ojienda to recover his money resulting from the case which had taken several years as the legal fee charges, the current NLC team failed to honour the court orders, which forced Ojienda back to the court prompting order against the Commission’s four accounts.
In May this year, Tache testified before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the National Assembly and asserted that Ojienda was owed Sh 524.13 million, inclusive of tax.
Opiyo Wandayi of Ugunja, the head of the PAC, questioned how the Commission could function with such a significant debt.
Brian Ikol, the Director of Legal Affairs and Regulatory Services for the Commission, who was present with Tache at the PAC meeting, asserted that the Commission had questioned whether to pay the Attorney General’s legal fee after raising concerns about the charge with him.
“The Attorney General granted us the okay to pay some of the amounts while others were to wait for the outcome of appeals for cases that were still pending in court,” Ikol said.
The viability of paying such a high price for legal services has been questioned by PAC.
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