Family battles bank to get back Sh60m auctioned home

From left, Paul Njenga, Esther Njenga, Elijah Njenga, Emmanuel Njenga and Daniel Njenga with their lawyer Simiyu Wabuge (third right) at the Milimani Law Courts yesterday. The siblings are challenging the sale of their home by Standard Chattered Bank. [George Njunge, Standard]

A family of five has asked the court to help them recover their ancestral home sold by a bank to recover Sh5 million loan.

In the suit filed by brothers Daniel Njenga and Paul Kagunda, the siblings said they had been homeless for seven years after Standard Chartered Bank auctioned their home to recover a loan their late mother Jane Wanjiru Njenga allegedly guaranteed a Mr Joseph Njuguna.

“It is our ancestral land where both our parents and late sister are buried. It is where we were born and grew up before it was unlawfully taken from us, rendering us homeless. My mother did not guarantee the loan as claimed,” said Njenga.

Loan repaid

Their home stands on a one-acre parcel in the outskirts of Nairobi along Kiambu Road. It has a six-bedroom bungalow and rental houses all valued at Sh60 million. The bank is said to have sold the house for Sh15.3 million.

According to Njenga, his mother only guaranteed Njuguna Sh4 million in 2006, which was repaid before she died in July 2009.

He testified that in 2009, the bank gave a loan of Sh5.6 million to Njuguna without security, after which they forged his mother’s signature purporting that she had agreed to extend the guarantee.

“My mother had been ailing for four years and was seriously ill at the time of execution of the loan and died a few days later, there is no way she could have signed the documents. I was so close to my mother, she would have told me of the loan,” he testified.

Njenga told Lady Justice Kossy Bor that he knew Njuguna as a family friend who frequented their house before their mother’s death and didn’t know he had forged the signature until the bank came to auction their house.