MP Aladwa and Children Implicated in Sh63 Million Buruburu Public Land Grab Scandal

MP George Aladwa has once again been thrown into the eye of a storm, this time over a Sh63 million public plot in Buruburu that anti-graft detectives say was quietly snatched from residents and handed to a company linked to him and his close associates.

What is emerging is a story of land meant for children’s playgrounds and community use morphing into private real estate overnight, pushed through by shadowy paperwork and suspiciously convenient transfers.

The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission has gone to court seeking to rip the land back from Julgem Communication Services Ltd, a firm investigators say is tied to the vocal Makadara MP.

According to court documents, the Buruburu Phase 5 parcel was never supposed to land in private hands. It had been reserved decades ago as an open space under the Nairobi City Council and was therefore not available for allocation to anyone. Yet in 2010, the land suddenly appeared under the name of Fatuma Mohammed, who was neither issued an allotment letter nor cleared through any approved development plan. A lease was magically created for her on the same day a suspicious green card was opened. 

Two years later, she transferred the land to Julgem for just Sh1 million, a fraction of its value even then, and a fresh certificate of lease was prepared instantly. At the time, Aladwa was not just a political heavyweight in Makadara but had just ascended to Nairobi’s mayoral seat, giving him enormous influence over City Hall’s land registries. Investigators believe the transfer was engineered to give a veneer of legitimacy to an already doctored ownership chain. Once Julgem secured the property, it was swiftly charged at Bunge Sacco for a Sh22.3 million loan, raising further questions about whether the land was being used as collateral for private financing schemes based on a fraudulent title. 

EACC now says the entire ownership trail is rotten. There is no original allotment letter, no trace of a legal lease, and no presidential or council approval for alienating a public utility. The commission bluntly calls the acquisition fraudulent, illegal and a textbook example of how public land disappears in Nairobi. A judge has already frozen any attempt to sell or transfer the land as the MP, the company, and other respondents wait to answer to the accusations. They have 21 days to file responses before the case comes up again in December. 

But the saga doesn’t end with Aladwa’s case. The commission has also uncovered a separate Sh70 million land grab in the same estate where a nursery school plot was quietly diverted to private hands. The trend paints a grim picture of Buruburu, one of Nairobi’s oldest estates, now battling wave after wave of land theft even as residents watch their open spaces, playgrounds, and community centres disappear into private titles overnight. 

For Aladwa, already a fiery political figure and ODM’s Nairobi branch chair, the case strikes at the heart of his public image. What investigators are laying out is not just a procedural slip but a scheme they believe was built on forged documents, backroom deals and exploitation of his influence at City Hall. The MP has not responded publicly, but his political critics say this is the clearest sign yet that powerful figures continue to treat Nairobi’s public land as personal inheritance.

As the case unfolds, Buruburu residents are demanding answers. How did prime public land vanish under the watch of city authorities? Who authorised the paperwork? And how many more playgrounds, schools and libraries have already been spirited away through similar schemes?

If the court sides with the anti-graft body, the land will be yanked back to the government and the Buruburu community may reclaim what was theirs all along. If it doesn’t, the controversy threatens to cement yet another chapter in Nairobi’s long, dark history of land grabbing that has swallowed everything from school fields to riparian reserves.

For now, all eyes remain on the Makadara MP at the centre of a storm that refuses to die down.