Resettling the Internally Displace Persons (IDPs) was never going to be an easy task, but with a transparent, consistent and professional approach, it was hoped that it could be done. However, reports in the past week have accused the government resettling programme of being "haphazard, incoherent and carried out in a manner lacking transparency".

This is the verdict of the Kenya Land Alliance's Budget Tracking on the Government Resettlement Programme 2006-08, a view supported by the report of the controller and auditor-general for the fiscal year 2206-07, that states that the land procurement process was neither open to competitive tendering nor transparent in its undertakings.

The 2006-07 budget set aside Sh400 million for settling the landless and the internally displaced, and the following year, a further Sh1.3 billion was approved for it. However, the Government flouted its own tendering procedures and bought settlement land from current and former politicians.

Worst of all were findings that some of the land bought in Molo had been listed by the Ndung'u report as illegally acquired and recommended for repossession. There is something grotesque about a government buying land from individuals who stole it from the public in the first place. Are we not legitimising theft?

When tendering rules are contravened to give advantage to the well connected, the victims' security and economic needs are put in jeopardy. Another valid grievance is the fact that only people from Coast and Rift Valley provinces have so far benefited from the recent resettlement.

There might have been an urgent need to address the Rift Valley IDPs' plight, but decades of neglect characterised the fate of the thousands of squatters at the Coast. However, why have we chosen to ignore the thousands of IDPs in Western and Nyanza who were displaced by the 1992 and 1997 clashes?

The Operation Rudi Nyumbani (return home) programme was hurriedly planned to facilitate the return of the displaced. There is no government resettlement policy as such. However, any resettlement programme must acknowledge that the current land tenure system is an integral part of the problem.

One is tempted to ask why ORN did not follow the Settlement Fund Trustees guidelines and integrate communities on the legislated 60:40 basis - with the former representing local and the latter non-local beneficiaries.

While KLA research has shown that 90 per cent of interviewed IDPs were land owners -- with 68 per cent having title deeds -- 43 per cent of them had been targeted more than once. In fact, a considerable percentage of the 2008 victims had suffered in 1992 and 1997.

If we ask many of the IDPs to return to where they have been evicted from three times, surely we are setting them up for another massacre in 2012. Let us take seriously the concerns of IDPs who are reluctant and frightened to go back home. Instead of buying land from the political elite, who acquired it by dubious means, why should the Government not offer to buy that of those who cannot go back to their farms?

I do not see any value in resettling IDPs in new settlement areas, while the status of their current land ownership is not settled. We must avoid a settlement programme that benefits powerful politicians and sets up vulnerable groups for another round of eviction. The families of the nation's first three presidents jointly have a million acres that they should consider sharing with the landless.