Two Towers Down in Ten Months: Nairobi Must Put Every Building Approval OnlineTwo Towers Down in Ten Months: Nairobi Must Put Every Building Approval Online

Our position is simple.

If the approval record for every high-rise in Nairobi were public, searchable by plot and matched to the construction regulator's register, the question of whether this building was approved would have been settled in minutes, and a forged approval would have failed the first time someone looked.

We call on Nairobi City County and the National Construction Authority to publish that record, starting with a list of every high-rise site now under construction by 30 November.

Three accounts of one Eastleigh building

Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja first said the building had county approval but no occupation certificate, the document that allows people to use a finished building, as reported by Eastleigh Voice. On Saturday he said county records show that an application for a building of more than 15 floors with a basement was never approved.

Government Spokesperson Charles Owino said the documents used to secure approvals are suspected forgeries, as Mwenendo reported in its account of the forgery suspicion.

The National Construction Authority (NCA), which registers and inspects building projects, says it registered the site as a proposed development on 30 July 2025, and it has named the developer as 9th Street Plaza Limited and the contractor as Stromax Holdings E.A Limited, Citizen Digital reported.

So a project was approved, then not approved, then possibly approved on forged paper, while the national regulator had it on its books for 15 months. None of these accounts has been tested in public, and no charges had been announced by Saturday evening.

A rescue still under way on 9th Street

The first duty is to the people under the rubble and the families waiting for news.

Since the building fell on Friday afternoon, the Kenya Red Cross has logged 31 missing-person cases, some of them workers who had gone home, while Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen said 67 workers were accounted for and seven people were missing. No deaths had been reported by Saturday afternoon.

Nothing in this editorial should slow the rescue. But the questions about approvals do not need rescuers to answer them. The answers already sit in files at City Hall and at the NCA, and they should already be public.

South C was flagged three times

Eastleigh is not a first warning. On 2 January a high-rise under construction collapsed in South C, killing two security guards.

Nairobi County says it flagged that project three times in 2025, in May, July and December, for building beyond its approved floors, and ordered work to stop; the contractors kept going, and three site workers arrested in July 2025 were released on KSh 20,000 ($154) cash bail, Citizen Digital reported.

In June the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions approved charges over South C, including manslaughter against four people and abuse of office against dozens of others, among them county planning officials, Citizen Digital reported. In August the High Court halted the prosecution of 18 of them, The Standard reported.

Mr Sakaja has described the pattern himself. "Whenever we see such an incident, an enforcement notice is issued, but it is not followed up," he said after Friday's collapse. That is not a defence. It is an admission from the office that issues the notices.

Buyers, banks and shopkeepers are checking blind

The cost of a hidden approval system does not fall only on construction workers. Off-plan buyers pay deposits on flats that exist only on a hoarding. Banks lend against projects whose permits they cannot independently confirm. Insurers write cover on sites they assume are lawful.

Eastleigh Voice established that shops were already trading on the ground floor of the 9th Street building before it fell, even though, by the governor's own first account, it had no occupation certificate.

Mwenendo advised buyers and lenders on Saturday to ask the county for an approval reference and check it against the NCA register before paying. That is sound advice, and it is also an unfair burden. When the governor himself gives two versions of one building's approval within a day, the system has failed the very check it asks ordinary Kenyans to perform.

The case against a public register

The strongest objection deserves a hearing. Officials can argue that forgery is a crime committed by a developer, not a failure of the system, and that criminals will cheat any register. Others will worry about cost, or about publishing building plans that owners consider private.

Our answer is that forgery succeeds precisely because approvals are checked against paper. A stamped letter can be copied; a reference number that must match a public database cannot be faked without the mismatch showing. We are not asking for drawings to be published.

We are asking for a handful of facts per site: the plot, the approval reference, the number of floors approved, the NCA registration date, the dates of inspections and any enforcement notice still outstanding. That is a spreadsheet, not a revolution.

Mr Sakaja has also asked for counties to regain powers to prosecute. Before Parliament grants City Hall new powers, City Hall should show it uses, and publishes, the ones it already has.

Three demands on City Hall and the NCA

First, by 30 November 2026, Nairobi City County and the NCA should jointly publish a list of every building site in Nairobi rising above five floors, with its approval reference, approved floors, registration date and any outstanding enforcement notice.

Second, by 31 March 2027, that list should become a permanent register searchable by plot number, with the approval reference displayed on every site board so that a buyer, a banker or a passer-by can check it on a phone in a minute.

Third, from today, any site that ignores an enforcement notice should be sealed, not fined, and the notice published. As part of the Eastleigh investigation, the government should also say which office received the suspected forged documents and how they passed.

Nairobi is building upwards faster than its regulators can watch. The families at the 9th Street tracing desk deserve more than another promise of a thorough probe. Open the files.