Officials freed as man jailed for 52 deaths in collapsed building

A Nairobi court has freed four government officials accused of the 2016 Huruma building collapse, in a controversial judgment that instead saw the property owner jailed over a tragedy that claimed 52 lives.

In a detailed judgment by Milimani Magistrate Gilbert Shikwe, officials from the National Construction Authority (NCA) and Nairobi County Government, including Director of Planning and Compliance Justus Kathenge and Mathare Sub-county Administrator Seline Ogallo, were acquitted, while building owner Samuel Kamau Karanja was sentenced to seven years in prison.

The ruling has reignited debate over accountability in the country's construction sector, after four government officials whose role in the tragedy had long been under scrutiny walked free despite the disaster claiming 52 lives. 

Critics say the ruling exposes a broken accountability chain that puts millions of Nairobi residents at risk every single night

The court decision has painted a picture of a catastrophe that many saw coming but failed to stop.

Evidence of over 42 witnesses showed the building was constructed on riparian land, a protected riverbank zone, without approvals from key state agencies.

The story of the Huruma tragedy begins not in 2016, but in 2011, when Karanja began constructing a six-storey residential block on land parcel LR No. 218/3/173, a piece of public riparian land on the edge of a river bank, without a title deed, without NEMA approval, without Water Resources Authority consent, and without any development permission from the county government.

Witnesses testified that the illegality was obvious from the start.

A licensed surveyor, Bibiana Rabuku, testified that her original 1996 subdivision scheme had deliberately left a 30-metre riparian reserve in the area, and that the collapsed building fell squarely within that protected zone. 

Stephen Gathuita Mwangi, then Chief Officer of Lands at Nairobi County, confirmed upon reviewing survey plans after the collapse that the building had been erected on riparian and public land, where no individual had any legal right to build.

A local assistant chief, Juma Ali Amir, testified that he personally intervened during construction in 2013, ordering workers to stop digging the foundations because the area was clearly on a riverbank.

“The illegality was something apparent to the naked eye, and being the eyes of the government, I tried to intervene,” assistant chief Juma Ali Amir told the court, recounting how he attempted to halt construction years before the collapse.

However, Karanja and his brother Henry Karanja, he told the court, confronted him directly and threatened to escalate the matter to his superiors, the District Officer and the District Commissioner.

His intervention failed, and construction continued unimpeded. Tenants later moved in.

By 2016, tenants were noticing cracks in the walls. They reported them to the caretaker, known in court proceedings only as DJ. His response was to apply cement over the cracks.

On the night of April 29, 2016, the six-storey block in Ngei II Estate, Huruma, crumbled into the riverbed beneath it, burying dozens of sleeping tenants.

Twelve agonising days of rescue operations followed. When it was over, 52 people were dead, and 73 others were injured.

Parents had lost children, spouses were widowed, and siblings vanished into the wreckage. It was one of the worst urban housing disasters in Kenya's history.

Karanja denied owning the collapsed building, claiming his property was on an adjacent parcel, LR No. 65948, and that he had no dealings with the deceased tenants. 

He further claimed the tenants were unknown to him and denied any dealings with power or water utility officials in relation to the collapsed structure.

Karanja disclosed in his defence that his co-accused brother, Henry Karanja, who was also a building owner and had been charged alongside him with 52 counts of manslaughter, took his own life after their arrest. 

The weight of facing the charges had proved overwhelming. Henry died before the trial concluded, a casualty of the case as much as the collapsed structure.

But his defence unraveled against the weight of circumstantial evidence.

Witnesses who were tenants in the building placed him at the scene on multiple occasions. 

Applications for electricity supply were made in his name. Victor Abuka, a KPLC-contracted electrical engineer who visited the site during construction, confirmed he received the application from Karanja and met electricians working on the site.

"The circumstances from which an inference of guilt is drawn must be cogently and firmly established," the magistrate stated in the judgment, referencing the legal threshold for circumstantial evidence.

After weighing all six key witnesses, the court found the chain of evidence complete and unambiguous. 

The court convicted Karanja on 31 of the 52 manslaughter counts, as well as charges of illegal riparian development and unlawful occupation of public land.

In his ruling, the magistrate acquitted four officials who had been charged alongside Karanja, including Pancras Wamwandu Mwakazi and Anthony Njuguna Ngugi, both Nairobi County development control officers; Gerald Morara Omoke, the assistant county commissioner for Mathare Division; and Joan Nyarombe Michieka, a NEMA environment officer.

The magistrate acquitted all four on all 53 charges, 52 counts of manslaughter and one count of neglect of official duty, citing critical gaps in the prosecution's case. 

The court noted that the letters relied upon by investigators only confirmed the officers' general roles in inspection and enforcement, but did not specify the areas each officer was assigned to.

Both Mwakazi and Ngugi produced counter-deployment letters showing they were posted to different wards. 

Michieka testified that she had been covering Makadara, Embakasi, and Njiru, not Nairobi North, where the building stood, and that she was on maternity leave with a two-month-old baby at the time of the collapse. She said she had never understood why she was charged.

Omoke, the assistant county commissioner, maintained that allocation of plots and supervision of construction fell outside his legal mandate, which was limited to chairing security committees and coordinating government policy. 

He also told the court that a DCI officer had approached him for a bribe of Sh100,000, an allegation that prompted the Permanent Secretary for the Interior Ministry to write a protest letter to the ODPP seeking a review of his charges.

The magistrate was blunt in identifying the prosecution's failure, but equally pointed in its implications for accountability.

"The result is the repugnant outcome that the responsible officers in Nairobi City County who stood back as the illegal structure was being constructed have clearly escaped accountability," the court stated. "I am not in a position to tell if this was by design or just happenstance."

The court further noted that senior officials in the county's enforcement department who oversaw the accused were never called to testify or charged. 

"I have noted that the second accused alluded as much in his defence that there were senior officers in his department who appeared to have been shielded from scrutiny in this case. I will say no more than this," the magistrate stated pointedly.

On Karanja, the magistrate imposed a single seven-year custodial term covering all 31 manslaughter counts, alongside five years imprisonment for unlawful development on riparian land and three years for unlawful occupation of public land. 

The court ordered that all the sentences run concurrently, resulting in an effective prison term of seven years.

In delivering the sentence, the magistrate was emphatic that the gravity of the offence ruled out a non-custodial sentence, despite appeals for leniency by defence counsel and a probation officer’s recommendation for a three-year probation term.

 “It is the opinion of this court that the gravity of the offence in question militates against imposing a non-custodial sentence,” the magistrate ruled.

The magistrate further stated that Karanja was jailed for seven years without an option of a fine, citing the principles of retribution, deterrence, and denunciation.

“Retribution, because this is meant to punish the offender as one who illegally built on riparian land and collected rent from tenants for years, thereby directly benefiting from the illegality,” the magistrate said.

On deterrence, the magistrate added: “Deterrence is also meant to discourage others who may be inclined to grab public land and make it their own, especially riparian land, thereby endangering innocent lives.”

“Denunciation, to communicate the nation’s condemnation of such criminal conduct, which has been endemic."

Karanja has 14 days to appeal.