Hearing of a case challenging the proposed leasing of 51,700 hectares of community land in Sereolipi, Samburu County, to a wildlife conservancy and an investor has concluded at the Environment and Land Court in Isiolo.

The case, heard both physically and virtually before High Court Judge Mboya Oguttu, saw five witnesses testify.

On October 11 last year, Simon Leparkiras, Leakono Jijiwe and six others, on behalf of residents of Sereolipi and Archers Post in Samburu East Constituency, sought an injunction under a certificate of urgency against the Registrar of Land in Nyahururu, the National Land Commission (NLC) and six others.

They want the court to stop the fresh registration of a 51,700-hectare parcel of community land that Sera Wildlife Conservancy and Great Plains Sera Limited want to lease.

Sera Wildlife Conservancy, Great Plains Foundation and the Northern Rangeland Trust (NRT) are also listed as respondents in the case.

The matter was certified as urgent on November 27, after which the court granted an injunction.

The full hearing of the case commenced on September 27.

During the latest round of proceedings, two senior members of the Community Land Management Committee (CLMC) from Sereolipi were questioned by lawyers for the petitioners on whether adequate consultations had been conducted with community members during the ongoing registration process.

Joseph Lentaka, the treasurer of the Sereolipi CLMC and a headteacher at a local primary school, explained that although the conservancy had existed since 2003 under the now-defunct Trust Land Act, Sera sought fresh registration in line with the Community Land Act, which came into force following the enactment of the 2010 Constitution.

Lentaka said the 51,700 hectares constituted the larger conservation area, within which there is a sanctuary for the rare and endangered white and black rhinos.

The sanctuary, together with a high-end luxury campsite, will occupy about 10,000 hectares, he said.

Lawyer Conrad Atiang of Kituo Cha Sheria, representing the petitioners, questioned why Sera Wildlife Conservancy required fresh registration if it had legally existed since 2003.

While seeking to establish whether adequate public participation had been conducted during the ongoing community land registration process in Sereolipi, Atiang took the witness through lists of attendees at various zonal meetings, as well as minutes of CLMC meetings and Annual General Meetings (AGMs).

For example, in two separate community meetings, the lawyer pointed out that one official, who is illiterate, had signed an attendance register, while in another entry for a different meeting, he had appended his thumbprint.

Atiang also pointed out several anomalies in the attendance registers presented in court, including instances where an individual appeared to have used different signatures at different community meetings. Lentaka, a teacher by profession, was among those questioned.

Atiang raised concerns over alleged forgery of documents and questioned the witness about his use of different signatures on crucial official documents, which the witness could not explain.

The hearing concluded on Tuesday after three witnesses, including representatives from the Attorney General’s office, the investor and the Registrar of Community Land based in Nyahururu, Mr Githinji, testified.

Atiang, who was accompanied by his colleague George Oduor, said a new 35-year lease agreement was being prepared for approval by the CLMC on behalf of the community.

He said the local residents, who are mainly pastoralists, opposed the proposed lease.

“What we are contesting is that they (the community) have not been directly been involved in the process of this engagement to prepare another lease agreement,” said Atiang.

“Under the Constitution, the community must be fully consulted and involved in the process. The respondents have violated many sections of the Community Land Act and the Constitution of 2010,” he noted.

Atiang clarified that the petitioners were seeking to stop the proposed lease, whose registration process began in July last year.

“For now, it (the land parcel) is yet to be acquired but the law allows us under the Constitution to petition the court to find out if human rights violations had been committed in the process,” he noted.

“We went to court to challenge the potential of violations of the possibility of the community land of Sereolipi to be leased out to the investors without following the due process as provided for in the Community Land Act and the Constitution,” added Atiang.

George Leparkiras, an elder from Sereolipi, said hundreds of herders had been displaced from their traditional grazing fields, alleging that the conservancy was of importance to “few corrupt politicians and elites”.

“Some of our leaders are also officials of the conservancy and the investment are foreign owned but held for them by their local proxies in the county,” claimed Leparkiras.

He further claimed that herders from Samburu East were not allowed to graze their animals within the larger conservation area, forcing some to migrate to neighbouring Isiolo in search of pasture and water.

“Our prime grazing field is located in this place (conservation area) and it is endowed with abundant water and yet we have no access to our ancestral land,” said the elder.

He said insecurity along the Samburu-Isiolo border, and at times within Isiolo, was partly caused by a lack of pasture on the Samburu East side, where he claimed most land was under wildlife conservancies.

Leparkiras also criticised Samburu leaders, from county government officials to elected Members of Parliament, for allegedly taking sides with entities he claimed had subjected local pastoralists to suffering over the years.

The court has set November 12 for directions, ahead of the setting of a date for judgment.