Eldoret Express buses are seen parked at the bus transport company's yard in Juja, Kiambu County, on August 6, 2020.
| Dennis Onsongo | Nation Media GroupTrans-Nzoia
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Court allows Eldoret Express bus company to evict squatters from its land
What you need to know:
- The squatters said they were displaced from their homes during the violence that followed the disputed 2007 presidential election.
A court has allowed a bus transport company to evict more than 1,000 squatters from its land in Kitale, Trans Nzoia, with police protection.
Eldoret Express Company Ltd had sought the enforcement of a 2019 Court of Appeal judgment that declared the firm the lawful owner of the land known as Tawai farm.
The squatters said they were displaced from their homes during the violence that followed the disputed 2007 presidential election.
The eviction will end a 13-year-old court dispute over the 640-acre property in Kiungani, southwest of Kitale.
Justice Samuel Kibunja noted that efforts by the squatters through their land-buying company Tawai Ltd to have the eviction suspended had been rejected by the Supreme Court in March 2021.
The court case started in 2008 when Eldoret Express sued seeking to be declared the owner of the land.
Two title deeds
At the centre of the dispute were two title deeds issued for the same land - one for Tawai Ltd and the other for Eldoret Express.
It was initially part of the larger 764-acre tract that was owned by George Alexander Sinclair before independence.
Eldoret Express directors said the company bought the land from Kaitet Tea Estates in 2001 for Sh40 million. They produced the original title deed and certificate of title.
For their part, Tawai said they were the registered owners of the land since 1976.
Tawai directors said the company bought the land in 1974. They said they took out a loan from Kenya National Capital Corporation (KNCC) bank in 1981 and used the title as security. The title was returned to them in September 2008, when they paid off the loan.
However, the Court of Appeal noted that Tawai had defaulted on the loan and the bank had subdivided the land and sold it.
Kaitet, a company associated with former Central Bank governor Eric Kotut, purchased the land from the bank for Sh7.1 million in 1987. Kaitet later sold the land to Eldoret Express.
Time limit
Appellate judges Patrick Kiage, Asike Makhandia and Otieno Odek (now deceased) had said there was no illegality, fraud or misrepresentation in the creation of the title held by Kaitet.
The judges said that in 1987 when the title was being created, Eldoret Express was nowhere in the picture.
It was held that Tawai’s efforts to recover the land from Kaitet were futile because of the time limit provided for in the law.
Because the claim of recovery was filed in May 2011, 24 years after Kaitet’s registration, the court found, it could not be entertained as it was filed over the 12-year limit for such claims.
However, the judges were left with a plethora of questions about Tawai’s conduct in its ownership claims.
For instance, the judges asked how Tawai could purport to be obtaining discharge in 2008 through unstated court orders and full payment of unstated sums.
Another question was how it could purport to create subdivisions of the land in 2008 when its evidence was that it subdivided it in 1983.
“If it received its title on discharge in February and September, 2008, when did it lose it to justify the alleged provisional certificate of title issued on May 21, 2008? And how is it that the purported discharge of charge from KNCC to Tawai dated September 15, 2008 purports to have been re-entered on June 10, 2008 at 12.45pm -more than three months before it was prepared?” the judges asked.
