Business Daily (Nairobi)
John Kamau
11 November 2009
When the nation starts to look at Agenda 4 of the National Reconciliation accord signed in the wake of the post-election violence and as the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions begins its sessions, one of the focus will be what went wrong with the World Bank-funded land settlement programme as laid out by the British government.
In this continuing series that began on Monday, we reveal how the failure of the entire project left Treasury strained and struggling to meet the loan obligations and how personal battles between two key ministers chosen to oversee the project added to the confusion.
Although politicians and civil servants had messed up the entire project by allocating to themselves choice land meant for the landless, they also tried to push Britain, which had guaranteed the World Bank loan, to agree to a halt on the loan repayments and when this failed, they convinced President Kenyatta to issue an order, which he went ahead to do, bringing more confusion to the settlement programme.
Besides the confusing presidential directives, there was a silent war between the Agriculture and Animal Husbandry minister Bruce Mckenzie and his lands and settlement counterpart, Jackson Angaine over the failed project.
The fall-out complicated the staffing of settlement with extension officers and farmers, who had little farming knowledge, were left groping in the dark.
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