Members of the Nairobi County Assembly Planning Committee have questioned the county government’s handling of building approvals following the collapse of an 18-storey building in Eastleigh, as rescue teams continued searching for seven people reported missing.
Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja has announced a city-wide crackdown on illegal construction, saying the collapsed building did not have an approved construction plan. Speaking at the site, Sakaja said developer John Mutia Musyoke had submitted an application for a 15-storey building with a basement, but the application was never approved.
The governor’s remarks prompted questions from the Nairobi South B MCA and Deputy Minority Leader Waithera Chege, who said the assembly’s planning committee had established that an approval had been generated by the county government.
Chege also questioned how businesses operating on the building’s ground floor obtained fire certificates if the required occupation documents had not been issued.
“We have since confirmed this approval was generated by the Nairobi County Government,” Chege said on Saturday, accusing the governor of giving conflicting accounts of the building’s approval status.
She dismissed the governor’s public statements as public relations efforts, arguing that the county leadership must take responsibility for the failures within its planning department.
Chege further alleged that some officers had been issuing building approvals without the legal authority to do so. She cited a 2023 appearance before the assembly’s planning committee, during which an assistant director reportedly said he had approved 600 buildings in Nairobi.
According to Chege, the law assigns the responsibility for issuing such approvals to the county executive committee member in charge of planning, raising questions about the procedures followed in the department.
She called for investigations into the approvals and urged authorities to hold all those found responsible accountable, including the governor.
“The buck stops with him,” she said, demanding that Sakaja present himself to police to record a statement over the incident.
Former Nairobi Mayor and Babadogo MCA Geoffrey Majiwa also criticised the county’s planning department, alleging that junior officers had been exercising powers over senior officials and interfering with decisions made by technical committees.
Majiwa questioned why the governor had allowed the alleged administrative problems to persist despite their potential consequences for building safety and development control.
He claimed that some approvals were being overturned after going through established review processes, raising concerns about transparency and accountability in the department.
“It is a sad story,” Majiwa said, calling for a restructuring of the planning department to address what he described as serious management failures.
He also questioned whether the collapsed building complied with zoning requirements for Eastleigh, urging authorities to establish whether the permitted number of floors was consistent with the applicable planning rules.
The allegations come as rescue teams continue searching for seven people reported missing after the building collapsed along 9th Street in Eastleigh on Friday afternoon, October 23, 2026.
Emergency responders returned to the site on Saturday, removing debris and attempting to reach the lower sections of the structure in the search for survivors.
The collapse has drawn attention to building approvals, inspection procedures and enforcement of construction standards in Nairobi, with county leaders calling for investigations into the circumstances surrounding the incident.
Authorities are expected to establish the cause of the collapse and determine whether any regulatory failures contributed to the disaster.