There are political deals made in the open, and then there are deals cooked in the shadows that only surface when the paper trail becomes impossible to ignore.
What has emerged from the corridors of the Migori County Government is, by any measure, one of the most explosive land transactions in the county’s short devolved history: Governor Ochillo Ayacko’s Cabinet has quietly approved a request to lease 900 acres of public land to a private company owned by the family of former Governor Zachary Okoth Obado, a man against whom Ayacko battled bitterly for years and who currently faces murder and corruption charges in the courts of Kenya.
The land in question, parcel Muhuru Kadem/Macalder/498, is no ordinary piece of soil.
It sits on one of the richest gold belts in Nyanza, a zone that has historically been the flashpoint of violent conflicts among artisanal miners scrambling for a slice of its mineral wealth.
It is public land, held in trust for the people of Migori since the days of the South Nyanza County Council.
On it today stand a sub-county hospital, schools, a bus park, markets, an aggregated industrial park and offices of both county and national government.
Yet the Ayacko administration, without apparent public participation or transparency, moved to hand a 30-year lease on this same tract to Global Search Solutions Ltd, a company incorporated in 2009 and registered under certificate number CPR/2009/3899, whose ultimate beneficial owner is Hellen Odhiambo Odie, wife to Okoth Obado.
Enemies Yesterday, Partners Today
That this deal involves Obado’s family makes it all the more extraordinary. Ayacko and Obado have shared one of the most bitterly personal rivalries in Kenyan county politics.
In 2017, Ayacko ran against Obado for the governorship and lost. He went to court to challenge the result. He lost again. He nursed his wounds, ran a third time in 2022, and finally unseated the Obado dynasty.
For years, the two men were the defining political poles of Migori County, as antagonistic as chalk and cheese.
Something has changed.
The two former adversaries have, in recent months, been photographed in each other’s company with a warmth that has set political tongues wagging across the Lake Region.
Obado, facing a corruption trial over an alleged Sh505 million fraud during his tenure, has since decamped to President William Ruto’s United Democratic Alliance ahead of the 2027 General Election.
Governor Ayacko, for his part, is said to be desperate for any political lifeline that can help him stave off a fierce challenge from Uriri Member of Parliament Mark Nyamita, who has publicly declared his intention to unseat him.
In that landscape, an Obado endorsement would be worth its weight in gold, quite literally.
It is against this backdrop that the land deal landed on the floor of the Migori County Assembly in December 2025, tabled by Majority Leader Ken Ouma. There are already glaring inconsistencies in the paperwork.
The motion tabled by Ouma speaks of 350 acres for Global Search Solutions. The Cabinet Memorandum approved by Ayacko’s executive speaks of 900 acres. Nobody has adequately explained that discrepancy of 550 acres of gold-rich public land.
A Man in Court, a Family in Business
Okoth Obado is not merely a disgraced former governor. He is a man standing in the dock on two separate fronts.
In the High Court, Justice Cecilia Githua ruled in January 2025 that Obado has a case to answer in the 2018 murder of Rongo University student Sharon Otieno, who was seven months pregnant when she was killed and her body dumped in Kodera Forest, Homa Bay County. Forty-two witnesses have testified. The case continues.
In the Milimani Anti-Corruption Court, Obado, four of his children and several associates face charges of conspiracy to commit economic crime, money laundering and unlawful acquisition of public property, with investigators linking them to the alleged siphoning of close to Sh2 billion from Migori County coffers through networks of proxy companies.
The EACC has already seized and auctioned properties linked to Obado and his allies valued at over Sh505 million. Among the forfeited assets were residential blocks, commercial properties and vehicles.
This is the family whose company now seeks a 30-year lease on 900 acres of Migori’s most valuable public land. The audacity of the application is breathtaking. Its apparent endorsement by the sitting governor is more so.
Silence Where Answers Should Be
When Nation Media Group first broke this story, it sent text messages and made calls to Governor Ayacko seeking comment. He did not respond. His communications office promised a statement. None came. The governor’s silence in the face of such questions is not merely politically damaging. For residents of Migori, it is a thunderous statement of its own.
The company’s Chief Executive Officer in charge of operations and finance, Evans Ouma Ogutu, whose personal telephone number appears as the contact for the company in official county documents, was more forthcoming, though not necessarily more convincing.
He insisted that the lease application is a legitimate business matter, that Obado’s political trajectory has no bearing on the company’s operations, and that Hellen Odhiambo Odie, the registered owner, plays no role in the day-to-day running of Global Search Solutions.
He emphasised that the request has followed due process and must still pass through the county assembly’s lands committee, public participation and, if successful there, through the National Land Commission. “We are following every procedure and meeting the requirements set for such a lease,” he told reporters.
Perhaps. But due process does not begin and end with procedure. It also demands transparency about who benefits and why. The stated purpose of the lease is to revive cotton farming and establish a Carbon in Pulp gold processing plant. On paper, that sounds like development.
In Migori’s political reality, cotton and gold are the window dressing for a transaction whose true currency is votes.
The Troubling Paper Trail
What makes this deal doubly troubling is what documents reveal about the other companies seeking land alongside Global Search Solutions.
Majority Leader Ouma’s motion sought approval to lease 50 acres to Joymakers Foundation, 50 acres to Vivatel Networks Limited and 31 acres to Noiya Women Enterprises Ltd.
According to CR12 records, both Global Search Solutions and Vivatel Network Solutions were prequalified suppliers for Kisumu County between 2018 and 2020, during the height of the Obado era in Migori.
Vivatel Network Solutions also shares a postal address with another entity, Conton Group. The web of interconnected companies deserves the full scrutiny of investigators.
The Migori County Assembly’s Lands Committee has been tasked with conducting public participation before tabling a final report.
Majority Leader Ouma told reporters the assembly has not yet considered the matter and that ward representatives will do due diligence.
That is reassuring in principle. But the committee operates within a political ecosystem where the executive that sent them this request is the same executive that decides their budget, their resources and their political futures. The structural incentives for rubber-stamping are formidable.
The People’s Gold, The Politicians’ Game
Ultimately, this story is not about Ayacko and Obado alone, though their political calculations are at its heart.
It is about 900 acres of land that belong to the people of Migori County. It is about a gold belt that local miners have bled and died over, resources that generations of Migori residents have a constitutional right to benefit from.
The Constitution of Kenya 2010 is unambiguous: public land held in trust by a county government exists for the benefit of its residents. It cannot be parcelled out to benefit the political ambitions of those entrusted with its stewardship.
If the Migori County Assembly approves this lease without genuine, transparent public participation, it will not merely have failed in its legislative duty. It will have handed a corrupt political establishment exactly the prize it sought.
The matter must now go before the National Land Commission, civil society and the courts if necessary. Migori’s gold belongs to Migori’s people, not to the next political deal cut in the shadows ahead of 2027.
