Eastleigh Building Collapse Investigation: DPP Orders DCI Probe as Named Engineer Dissociates

The Eastleigh building collapse is now a criminal investigation. On Monday, October 26, Kenya's Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) directed the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) to investigate what caused the multi-storey building on 9th Street in Nairobi's Eastleigh area to come down on Friday, October 23 — and on the same day, the structural engineer named by the National Construction Authority (NCA) publicly dissociated himself from the building. Three days after the collapse, the central question has shifted from rescue to responsibility: who designed this building, who approved it, and who actually built it?

The DPP's order — and why it came only now

According to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP), the DPP directed the DCI to conduct thorough investigations under Article 157(4) of Kenya's Constitution, citing the gravity of the incident and the need to establish the circumstances of the collapse. The ODPP also explained why its office had not acted earlier: in its words, as of the date of its statement, no inquiry file relating to the construction of the building had ever been forwarded to it by the Nairobi City County Government concerning alleged misconduct by the developer, construction professionals or county officials. That clarification matters, because it draws a line between what the county knew and what prosecutors were ever asked to examine — and the DCI probe will now test both sides of that line. Our earlier Eastleigh post set out what was confirmed, what was disputed and what was still unknown in the first days after the collapse.

The engineer who says: not my building

In its October 23 statement, the NCA identified the project — on Land Reference Number 36/II/40, 9th Street, Eastleigh, registered on July 30, 2025 — and named developer 9th Street Plaza Limited, contractor Stromax Holdings E.A. Limited, architect Emmanuel Mwangi Maina and structural engineer Joseph Muturi Mugu. On Monday, Mugu issued a public notice dissociating himself from the construction works, saying he was responding to the NCA's statement identifying him as the project's structural engineer. According to Capital FM, his lawyers say his involvement was limited to preparing structural designs for a proposed 15-storey building and handing them to the client for submission for approval — and that he never received an approval code for those designs and undertook no further professional work on the project. His lawyers have asked the NCA and the county government for certified copies of the project records, including registration documents, drawings, approvals and electronic submission logs, to establish how his details came to be recorded. None of this has been independently verified yet, and it does not by itself prove what was built — but it does mean the NCA's own record is now disputed by the man named in it.

The approvals puzzle

This is where the case gets complicated. Registration with the NCA is not the same thing as county development permission, and investigators will have to establish, document by document, what was registered, what was approved, what was actually built, and whether the two match. The building had no occupation certificate, and the county has said a taller development was never approved — while MP Babu Owino has publicly posted what he says is a February 2024 approval document, whose scope has not been verified. Reports of a manhunt for those behind the project have also circulated, while a government spokesperson has said the registered owner is dead; neither claim has been independently confirmed, and both are reported here only as claims. The Engineers Board of Kenya has separately announced its own formal investigation into whether any engineers were involved and whether professional standards were breached.

The numbers, with their sources attached

Because early figures in this story have shifted from day to day, every number below carries its source. Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen confirmed 67 construction workers were at the site when the building fell. The National Police Service said on Sunday, October 25, that it had rescued four people, who were receiving medical attention; other reporting on Monday put the confirmed rescues at two. Government officials have cited five people missing and four hospitalised, while missing-person reports lodged with the Kenya Red Cross tracing desk had reached 47, according to press reports. These are different kinds of figures — confirmed rescues, official missing counts, and reports from families still seeking relatives — and they should not be added together into a single total. Until the DCI and the Engineers Board report, the honest picture is a partial one: a building that fell, a paper trail now under dispute, and an investigation that has only just begun.