Eric Wainaina
15 June 2011
Nairobi — Money and greed for power were major causes of the collapse of Mbo-I Kamiti, one of Kenya’s leading coffee producers, it is alleged.
In the 1980s and 90s, with assets valued at over Sh4 billion Mbo-I Kamiti Farmers’ Company in Kiambu was a giant but today it is facing liquidation.
The company was founded in 1971 with an aim of settling labourers who had worked in white men’s farms and widows of Mau Mau freedom fighters.
But leadership wrangles hit the land buying company, paving the way for directors who, it is claimed, looted its assets, dashing the hopes of its 8,000 shareholders.
The company became a graveyard for some of its own directors with at least six of them dying from food poisoning, the victims of the deadly fight to control the assets of the firm.
Early this year, Mr James Ngamau, who was the company’s treasurer, was shot as he waited for a matatu at Kabaazi estate. A former director has been arraigned in court over the matter.
The company was set up after three men — Mr Gachanja Nduga, Mr James Ndung’u and the late Bernard Kimani — met in 1970 and decided to buy Kamiti Valley Company, a coffee farm owned by expatriates who were planning to leave the country.
“I only had Sh47,000, Kimani had Sh24, 000 and Gachanja had Sh83,000 and the company which had Kilooma (284 acres), Matropi (298 acres), Anmer (218 acres), and Kabaazi (218 acres), was being sold at Sh24 million,” recalled Mr Ndung’u.
“We formed and registered Mbo-I Kamiti in 1972 in order to raise the money through contributions from shareholders who were workers in the same company,” he said.
Casual labourers were contributing Sh500 each which was never enough and getting a loan through a guarantor became their solution. They bought the company in 1975.”It’s so painful that we struggled to raise the Sh500 to get a share but all our hopes have been shattered by greedy people who have sold what we had brought together,” said Mr Samuel Mwangi, a shareholder.
The company has experienced a steep fall from the apex of political power to its current situation as a struggling concern that faces the previously unthinkable ignominy of being liquidated over debts running into hundreds of millions of shillings.
The company once had the best tea, dairy and coffee farms in Kiambu and Naivasha and at its peak it was bringing in Sh300 million a year but today some of its assets are now the subject of court battles.
By 1982, through money generated from coffee sales, Mbo-I-Kamiti had bought more farms including Kiora (365 acres), and Olmorogi and Drimo in Naivasha, each 4,521 acres.
Today, coffee trunks, rusting roofs and bleached bricks of what once were the company’s office and factories are all that remain.
Current and previous directors say interference in the company by the provincial administration was start of its troubles.
“In February 1982 we called for an annual general meeting but I saw police officers were all over and the DC changed our agenda to elections.
“We left without taking anything from the offices because we were ordered not to contest,” recalled Mr Ndung’u, who was the company’s secretary.
Bradgate Coffee Estate in Kiambu, one of the company’s assets with an estimated value of more than Sh500 million was recently sold to a local businessman for Sh100 million.
Olmorogi ranching and the Summer Estate in Maragua, which has been bought for Sh61 million were disposed of under unclear circumstances.
Mrs Gladys Kamau, the longest serving director attributed the fall of the company to power and greed.
Currently, the subdivision of land is taking place, led by the company’s chairman, Mr Thuo Mathenge, by which the shareholders get a 50ft by 100ft plot each irrespective of the number of shares they have.
Land sub-division
Mr Mathenge said the only solution to the company’s endless problems was to dissolve it.
“We want each shareholder to get a piece of land even if it’s a small one because if the situation persists, all the assets may end up being disposed by greedy directors and shareholders will remain empty handed,” Mr Mathenge said.
Many shareholders have cautiously welcomed the move. “We can only hope it is being done genuinely,” said 78-year-old Nancy Wambui adding:
“We don’t want a repeat of what happened before, where we contributed Sh5,000 as a surveyor’s fee so the land could be sub-divided but the deal was just fake and we were conned.”
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