A company co-owned by former Prime Minister Raila Odinga and his widow, Ida Odinga, is among the top bidders for Sh645.79 million houses and land that Telposta Pension Scheme put on sale days after the veteran politician died on October 15 last year.
The Odinga family placed a Sh150 million bid for two-bedroom houses along Kangundo Road when the scheme announced the first phase of selling the multi-billion shilling properties.
The disposal is aimed at boosting liquidity and ensuring compliance with regulations limiting a pension scheme’s property holdings to 30 percent of total assets.
The bid, which was above the Sh145.2 million reserve price for the houses, was submitted through Kango Enterprises, a company co-owned by the former Prime Minister and his widow.
Each of them holds 100 ordinary shares, according to records by the Business Registration Services.
Another big-ticket bid came from Proland Holding Limited, a real estate company that is seeking to acquire Telposta’s bungalow in Nairobi’s Matumbato close for Sh400 million against the property’s reserve price of Sh366 million.
Official records show the real estate company is owned by John Mburu Ikinu and also has James Watitu Njoroge and Arthur Konye Igeria as director and secretary, respectively.
Rebecca Miano has put in two bids of Sh12.84 million and Sh12.16 million for bungalows in Nyahururu town.
The scheme also received three bids from Patricia Kiwanuka, totalling Sh18.75 million. One bid is for a Sh14.55 million bungalow along Elgeyo Marakwet Road in Nairobi, while two other bids are Sh2.1 million each for bungalows in Mweiga town.
Telposta, which is in a race to cut its holdings in land, houses, and buildings to below 30 percent from the current 83 percent, says the value of the total top bids is above the Sh593 million reserve price and Sh493 million book value of the properties offered for sale.
The scheme opened the bids on October 30, 2025, and closed on December 1, 2025, marking the first phase of disposing of the multi-billion shilling properties it owns, including the Telposta Towers that the government has committed to acquire.
The properties on sale are 64 in number, spread out in Nairobi, Naivasha, Nyahururu, Nyandarua, Nanyuki, Karatina, Mweiga, Isiolo, Nyeri, Kericho, Kapsabet, and Sotik.
TelPosta Pension Scheme administrator Peter Rotich said the bids received have given the scheme a strong indication that they are going to unlock value from the houses and land, many of which have been giving annual returns of under one percent.
“The competitive bids represent a Sh151 million gain. We closed the bid in December and evaluated the bids. We are now in the process of engaging the successful bidders,” said Mr Rotich.
“Closing these first round of deals as they are will give us a gain of about 31 percent. This means we are exiting at a profit and will put this money in high-yielding securities.”
The scheme recently advertised the second round of property disposals as it hopes to build on the investor interest shown in the first batch of sales. The bidding opened on March 12 and will close on April 27, allowing the scheme to pick the highest bidders.
The over 40 properties lined up for disposal have a reserve price of Sh414.72 million. They are spread out in Nairobi, Naivasha, Nyandarua, Karatina, Nyeri, Isiolo, Kericho, Sotik, and Eldoret.
“Tenderers shall submit together with the bid document a deposit of 10 percent of the reserve price for each bidded property in the form of a banker’s cheque,” says the tender document.
The second round of sale of properties to the public comes at a time when the scheme is in negotiation with the government to buy four properties — TelPosta Towers, Gilgil GTI staff quotas, and two flats in Makande and Bombolulu in Mombasa.
The State has classified the four properties, valued by the scheme at about Sh10 billion, as strategic and has offered to acquire them.
The scheme was established on July 1, 1997, as a defined benefit scheme to provide retirement benefits to the staff of Telkom Kenya. It became a closed scheme in 2007, meaning it does not admit new members.
Now nearly 84 percent of the scheme’s members are aged between 60 and 79 years. The scheme pays out an average of Sh11,895 every month to its members. Since becoming a closed scheme, it has paid out over Sh14.5 billion to its over 5,000 members.
Most of the members are former employees and dependents of people who worked at East African Posts & Telecommunication Corporation (EAPTC) and Kenya Posts & Telecommunication Corporation (KPTC).
EAPTC and KPTC gave birth to Telkom Kenya, Postal Corporation of Kenya, and the Communications Authority of Kenya, which later set up their own separate pension schemes, leaving Telposta as a closed scheme.
