- Delivering his judgement on May 10, Chief Magistrate Linus Kassan said the Commissioner of Lands was not supposed to allocate the land.
- The land was registered under the Ministry of Housing now State Department for Housing and Urban Development.
Image: FILE
The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission has recovered 0.5 acres of public land which was illegally grabbed from the Milimani Estate in Kakamega County.
The recovery case was filed before the Kakamega Chief Magistrate's Court in 2018.
The land, which was illegally and fraudulently allocated to a private citizen (first defendant) by the former Commissioner of Lands, had been set aside for the construction of residential houses for public servants.
It was registered under the Ministry of Housing now State Department for Housing and Urban Development.
Delivering his judgement on May 10, Chief Magistrate Linus Kassan said the Commissioner of Lands was not supposed to allocate the land.
"Courts should nullify titles by land grabbers who stare at your face and wave to you a title of the land grabbed and loudly plead the principle of indefeasibility of the title deed," he said.
Kassan ordered the land registrar to declare that the land allocation, subsequent registration and issuance of the Certificate of Lease to the 1st defendant was illegal, therefore null and void.
Further, he ordered the land registrar to rectify the Kakamega Land Register by the cancellation of the Certificate of Lease and all entries on the Land Register in respect of the plot as relates to the 1st defendant.
"An order of permanent injunction restraining the 1st defendant, his/her agents, servants, assigns or any one of them from leasing, transferring, charging," Kassan said.
"Entering or taking possession, and or in any other manner howsoever from dealing with Land Reference Number Kakamega Municipality Block III/278 other than by the way of transfer, delivery up or surrender of the same to the government of Kenya."
Through its Head of Corporate Communication Eric Ngumbi, EACC has advised public institutions to maintain up-to-date registers of all public assets vested in their care and control.
He said failure to maintain asset registers and to secure unused government land through fencing, are some of the reasons for the increasing cases of grabbing of public houses and plots.
He also advised the institutions whose lands have been grabbed to file reports to EACC.