Kibokoni squatters protest land grabbing, demand fresh adjudication

Squatters at the Kibokoni Baharini squatter settlement scheme in Sabaki ward, Magarini Sub County, Kilifi County have protested skewed adjudication of a 540 acre piece of land and are demanding a repeat of the exercise.

Led by their representatives, Evans Thethe and Frida Kazeha, the more than 400 squatters claim that outsiders had been allocated huge parcels of land in the area while they only heard that they will be given plots of between 50 feet x 100 feet and 100 feet x 100 feet.

“We came into this land in 2002 and reclaimed the land and we have homes here but there are some people who are using the security agencies to harass and displace us from here. It is not possible that we reclaimed the land and have been staying here for almost 30 years and then you only allocate me a plot yet I have five acres,” said Mrs Kazeha.

Thethe on his part said that efforts to find solutions to the problem have been futile yet President William Ruto ordered the land to be given to the squatters residing in it.

“Very recently, President Ruto came here in Sabaki and ordered that we be issued with land title deeds but instead of his officers doing the right thing, they have brought in people from outside and allocated them huge parcels of land and reserved small plots for us, we will not be cowed until we get justice,” he said

Land rights activist Nyundo Kudundi accused ministry of lands officers of taking advantage of Ruto’s directive to grab part of the land.

“This scheme should be redone and be adjudicated as a squatter settlement scheme. It is more than six months since adjudication was done but no one knows their allotment number and no one knows the map of this area yet it was supposed to be done three months into the adjudication process,” said Kudundi.

They also complained that since the adjudication started, they have never been issued with allotment letters but new individuals were demarcating and fencing off large swathes of land and displacing genuine squatters.

They now want the government to revoke the adjudication exercise and the process to be repeated with the genuine list of squatters.