Media tycoon SK Macharia has escalated his protracted land dispute with President Uhuru Kenyatta’s cousin, Ngengi Muigai, with the filing of a case in court seeking to stop the National Land Commission (NLC) from adjudicating the matter.

Mr Muigai has since 1991 fought Mr Macharia and two other businessmen — JG Kibe and Solomon Wilson Karanja — for allegedly denying him his equal share or 25 acres of a 100-acre piece of land near Nairobi’s Karura Forest.

Mr Muigai, Mr Macharia, Mr Kibe and Mr Karanja were directors of Sceneries Limited, the company that purchased the land in 1988, but Mr Muigai claims his co-directors later kicked him out of the company and denied him his share of the land.

The NLC in November last year began investigations into how Sceneries, under the ownership Mr Macharia and Mr Kibe, acquired a title deed for the prime city property, which they then sold to the Kenya Reinsurance Corporation in 1997 for Sh550 million.

Mr Macharia has moved to court to quash the ongoing adjudication of the matter by the NLC, claiming that the process started without his involvement and that Mr Muigai’s witnesses testified against him without his presence.

Mr Muigai has, however, asked the court to dismiss the petition on grounds that Mr Macharia was not only aware of the proceedings but even participated in them.

“Although Sceneries Limited claims to have been unaware of the proceedings before the NLC, it has substantially participated in them and gone ahead to file substantive submissions in reply of the complaint and is therefore stopped from challenging the procedures and/or orders made thereof. Sceneries has failed to disclose to this court any alternative remedy before instituting this application,” Mr Muigai says.

The proceedings before the NLC were initiated on the strength of a complaint by Mr Muigai. But Mr Macharia obtained a court order stopping the probe, pending the hearing of his application.

Mr Macharia is the founder and sole proprietor of Royal Media Services, which owns Citizen TV and a host of vernacular radio stations.

He has sued the NLC and enjoined Mr Muigai and Kenya Re as interested parties in the petition.

The media mogul maintains that he only participated in the NLC proceedings from March 16, long after the inquiry began.

Kenya Re is yet to respond to the suit.

The NLC is the agency that is charged with interrogating land dealings that are suspected to have been acquired irregularly from the government. 

Mr Macharia says in his petition that he will be forced to refund Kenya Re the Sh550 million it paid him for the land should the NLC rule that the 1997 sale was unlawful.

Mr Muigai — a former MP for Gatundu — adds in his objection that the court will be interfering with the NLC’s constitutional mandate if it stops the inquiry into the 1997 land deal between Mr Macharia and Kenya Re.