No relief for Mau settlers waiting for titles

Lawyer Kipkoech Ngetich is carried shoulder-high by jubilant residents of Kapsinendet in Eastern Mau, Molo Constituency, during a thanksgiving event on December 6, 2024.[FILE,Standard]

For residents of six settlement schemes in Eastern Mau, the year ended without the long-awaited relief they had hoped for — the issuance of title deeds — despite a clear court directive ordering the government to regularise their settlement.

Had the government implemented a landmark judgment delivered on September 30, 2024, more than 45,000 residents would by now be legal land owners.

Instead, uncertainty persists, extending a decades-long wait.

In the ruling, Environment and Land Court judge John Mutungi ordered the government to settle residents living in Nessuit, Marioshoni, Sururu, Likia, Sigotik and Terit settlement schemes, covering a total of 35,301 hectares in Eastern Mau.

“The petitioners have established that they were legally settled in the schemes from 1995 and are rightfully in occupation of the land,” Justice Mutungi ruled.

The case was filed by Nessuit MCA Samuel Tonui on behalf of the residents, through lawyers Kipkoech Ngetich and Renny Langat.

They argued the settlers occupied the land following the lawful excision of 35,301 hectares by then Environment Minister Katana Ngala via Legal Notice No. 142 of October 8, 2001.

The residents sought to block evictions and challenged earlier attempts to degazette the land, including Legal Notice No. 889 of January 30, 2001, issued by then minister Francis Nyenze. They also asked the court to affirm the legality of the 2001 excision.

Justice Mutungi found that the government had indeed created the six settlement schemes to resettle landless Kenyans and victims of the 1992 tribal clashes.

He noted that the government first issued a 28-day notice on January 30, 2001, declaring its intention to alter the Eastern Mau boundary and excise land for settlement.

A subsequent notice by Katana Ngala in October 2001 formally excised the 35,301 hectares.

“The two notices have never been vacated or overturned, and it is clear that those people living within the specified hectares were validly settled,” the judge ruled.

The court ordered the government, within 12 months, to re-establish boundaries in Eastern Mau, physically place beacons, verify and authenticate all allottees, and issue title deeds to eligible residents. Titles already issued, the court said, were valid and must be respected.

However, residents found to be outside the demarcated settlement areas and encroaching on forest land were ordered to vacate. Failure to do so would allow the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) to evict them under the Land Act.

Justice Mutungi also imposed strict environmental conditions. Landowners within the schemes were warned not to interfere with riparian reserves or rivers and were directed to restore tree cover to at least 30 per cent of their land within 60 months. The Interior Ministry, KFS, NEMA and the Water Resources Management Authority were tasked with overseeing compliance.

In his judgment, the judge acknowledged that Eastern Mau had long been plagued by clashes arising from land disputes rooted in historical landlessness following independence and the abolition of the shamba system in the 1980s.

“The same government that now wants to evict the settlers is the one that permitted them to live on this land,” Mutungi observed, adding that the state had failed to present a clear resettlement plan for the more than 45,000 residents.

“The court must be conscious not to, in the name of protecting the environment, usher in humanitarian issues of people being left in the streets and markets without land,” he ruled.

The court declined to award compensation to those evicted, citing lack of proof that evictions had occurred within the settlement schemes rather than forest land.

Despite the orders, implementation has stalled. The September 30, 2025 deadline lapsed without meaningful action by the government.