From wealth to land and power: Why Purko Trust is at crossroads

Ilkiremisho community members demonstrate at Tipis town against Purko Ranch staff over fracas that left 14 injured, July 3, 2024.[File]

A calm meeting at Tipis trading centre suddenly turned into a shouting match.

Voices rose and accusations flew across the open field as angry members moved towards a local chief after he intervened in a dispute involving a land investor.

It took the intervention of religious leaders to prevent an ugly confrontation.  For a community accustomed to discussing its affairs through elders, leaders and carefully negotiated consensus, the scenes were unsettling. But perhaps they were also inevitable.

For months, Purko Development Trust had been accumulating unresolved questions about money, land, leadership, accountability and political influence, until they finally spilled into the open before more than 200 beneficiaries at the trading centre in Narok North. At the heart of the simmering anger was the former Board of Trustees chaired by Selela Ole Mwanik who had increasingly become the target of criticism from members, staff, former trustees and community elders.

Now the old board is gone.

Former Narok South MP, also a former Narok County Assembly Speaker Nkoidila Ole Lankas has taken over as chairman of the new board.

And with the change has come a mixture of relief, expectation and suspicion. The obvious question is whether the Purko Development Trust has finally turned a corner. The more difficult question, however, is whether anything fundamental has changed.

But to understand the anger, one must first get the context of what is at stake.

The Purko Development Trust traces its roots to 1956, when it was established as the Purko Sheep Ranch, principally for livestock breeding and sales to the community, before being formally registered as a Trust in 2000.

The Trust’s own records describe it as an agriculture-based community institution with about 5,500 acres spread across its ranches including Tipis, Narok town and Naroosuara supporting crop farming, livestock production and community programmes.

Over the years, however, Purko has become much more than a sheep ranch. It has accumulated assets whose value has been estimated by stakeholders at about Sh2.6 billion.

Its own published history records investment in wheat, barley, potatoes and peas, alongside livestock production and education support.

The Trust has also previously reported substantial investment in education, including scholarships and bursary support, while its 2023 annual report recorded Sh6.27 million spent on education scholarships for 378 students during that reporting period.

This is therefore not merely a leadership dispute but a fight over an institution carrying the economic hopes of an entire community.

And that makes the governance questions particularly serious. The structure of Purko was supposed to prevent such a crisis.

Under the 2019 Trust Deed, the institution has a 200-member General Assembly drawn from five regions, a Leadership Council, a Board of Trustees and professional management.

The General Assembly represents beneficiaries. The trustees provide oversight. Management runs the institution while the Leadership Council provides the broader community direction.

Governance rights

But somewhere along the way, these lines have become increasingly blurred.

Former trustee Eliud Neliang accused the fired Mwanik of failing to convene the General Assembly for several years, effectively weakening the organ through which beneficiaries should exercise their ultimate oversight.

“We are witnessing the erosion of institutional integrity. Decisions are being made outside the structures that safeguard this Trust,” Neliang said.

That accusation goes to the heart of the crisis. A community trust cannot claim to represent its beneficiaries while the beneficiaries are unable to regularly exercise their most basic governance rights.

Indeed, the Trust’s own 2023 records show that General Assembly meetings were previously central to its governance, with the Assembly considering audited financial reports, investment proposals and board decisions.

The absence of that forum creates a vacuum. And vacuums in institutions are rarely left empty. Someone eventually fills them.

At Purko, critics say that space has increasingly been occupied by politicians. Critics within Purko argue that the Leadership Council under the patronage of Narok governor Patrick Ole Ntutu has acquired too much influence over the Trust and that elected leaders dictate decisions.

Yet Purko is a sophisticated institution dealing with commercial agriculture, leases, banking, contracts, procurement, employment, investment and billions of shillings in assets.

Court papers

According to figures presented by Chief Executive Officer Joseph Ole Nkaiwuatei, the defunct Board spent Sh9.458 million in the 2024/25 financial year against an approved budget of Sh3.864 million, an overrun of about Sh5.594 million.

In the 2025/26 financial year, he said, expenditure has reached Sh4.139 million, already exceeding the annual budget by Sh675,825 even before the financial year ends.

Board-related expenses over two years were put at approximately Sh15.2 million against an approved allocation of Sh7.6 million.

This has left members asking: How much should a community institution spend governing itself?

Mzee Turere Ole Tikan was particularly critical of the practice of holding board meetings in hotels in Narok town.

He argued that meetings should be held at the Trust headquarters rather than commercial venues where sitting allowances and venue charges could increase costs.

“No meeting should be held by the Board outside the Trust grounds. We call on them to desist,” Mzee Tikan declared.

Dethroned Mwanik rejected allegations of financial impropriety.

“The Board has not used any money improperly. In fact, we reduced our sitting allowances to Sh5,000 per meeting in order to safeguard the Trust’s resources,” he said.

In February 2026, the Environment and Land Court at Narok dismissed an application by Dr Nchorira Naikuni seeking orders to stop the leasing of 500 acres of Purko community land.

Court papers show that Mwanik defended the process as having been conducted through advertisement and competitive bidding, with approval from the Leadership Council.

At Tipis, Dr Naikuni confronted another land issue, accusing investor Ole Kerema, also known as Manamba, of owing more than Sh1.8 million in lease fees for 70 acres.

“I demand that the investor who is seated with us here pays the accrued arrears. Some beneficiaries are undermining the Trust by refusing to remit lease fees,” Naikuni said.

The Mwanik era is now over. Ole Lankas has taken the chair. But his arrival has not silenced the critics.

Trust member John Lemayian has questioned whether replacing Mwanik with another prominent political figure represents the merit-based transformation Purko requires.

Musa Nampaso, a member of the Trust, says for all the anger surrounding Purko, there is something quietly encouraging beneath the crisis. The community is asking questions, members are demanding accounts, former trustees are speaking, staff are challenging decisions and elders are demanding restraint.

“And the courts have already provided an avenue through which disputes over community land can be tested. The new Board therefore inherits not a broken institution, but an institution at a decisive point,” said Nampaso, who attended the meeting.

“Purko has assets. It has land. It has farms. It has livestock. It has a history. It has beneficiaries. What it needs now is institutional discipline,” he added.

The General Assembly must become meaningful again. The board must become professional. Management must be allowed to manage while remaining accountable.

Change of faces

The Leadership Council must understand that political influence has limits. And community land must be treated not as a bargaining chip but as an inheritance held in trust for generations yet unborn.

The Trust’s own historical record shows that it has previously survived serious financial difficulties and undertaken restructuring, debt repayment, agricultural expansion and education programmes.

Its 2023 report, for example, recorded more than Sh70 million in inherited debts repaid during the preceding restructuring period. That history offers a reason for hope.

But hope alone will not save Purko. It will require uncomfortable reforms.

The new board must be willing to investigate its predecessor without turning the process into political revenge.

It must audit disputed transactions. It must publish what beneficiaries have a right to know.

And it must make sure that the next leadership change is determined by transparent rules rather than political influence or clan arithmetic.

Because the real legacy of the Lankas board will not be whether it defeated Mwanik’s faction.

It will be whether it made the chairman’s office less important than the institution itself.

According to Naikuni, politicians have come and gone, trustees have served and gone, CEOs have been at the helm and gone, but the community land remains.

That is why the current crisis is ultimately bigger than any individual.

“It is a test of whether a community can own wealth collectively without allowing that wealth to become a magnet for political power, factional competition and personal interests,” notes Naikumi, a lecturer at the Maasai Mara University.

The old board has been removed. The new one has arrived. Now Purko must prove that the change was more than a change of faces.

PURKO TRUST: NUMBERS BEHIND THE DISPUTE

Established: 1956 as the Purko Sheep Ranch; formally registered as a Trust in 2000.

Mandate: Manage community assets and promote economic development, livestock production, agriculture and education among the Purko community.

Landholding: About 5,500 acres across Tipis, Narok town and Naroosuara.

Estimated assets: About Sh2.6 billion, according to figures cited by stakeholders.