Politician Cyrus Jirongo testified in court on Tuesday, in a case in which a 70-year-old woman has been accused of trespassing into his property.
The land measuring about 10 acres and valued at more than Sh 300 million is registered under Kuza Farms Limited, the company in which Jirongo is chairman.
It is registered under title Eldoret Municipality Block 141167.
Jirongo told the Eldoret court that Mary Njoki had refused to move from the property since 2015 and that she turned violence when he and his agents asked her to leave.
The former Lugari MP told Chief Magistrate Charles Obulutsa
that the land’s title had been charged at the collapsed Post Bank where his company took a Sh1.2 billion loan.
“I have repaid much of the money. This land is one of the properties we have earmarked for sale so as to clear the remaining Sh280 million of the debt."
Jirongo further said the womanturned violent
last year
and chased him away while waving a panga
“At one time last year I had to run away because when I visited the farm, she became very noisy and wielded a panga. I feared that I would land in the media for fighting with such an old woman," he said.
Jirongo said he avoided any form of confrontation with the woman out of respect.
“She is very old. It would be unwise for me to use force by sending people to evict her," he said.
The politician told the court that he bought the farm from two people in 1996 and that a man identified as Radion Ntabo later introduced him to several squatters including Njoki.
Last year Ntabo and the other squatters agreed to move after learning that it belonged to Jirongo but Njoki declined. She was arrested and charged with forcefully holding onto the land.
Njoki denied the charges and noted she had lived on the property for several decades.
She said she had never been issued with a notice to vacate the property.