How granny lost Sh100m land over 45-day delayed appeal

Efureith Irima Mugo during an interview with 'The Standard'. [Amos Kareithi, Standard]

Homeless, drained and penniless. This is the outcome of a 51-year legal tussle which has cost a 70-year-old Embu grandmother her ancestral land worth an estimated Sh100 million.

Efureith Irima Mugo and her lawyer Rose Njeru are now blaming a 45-day delay at the height of Covid-19 pandemic in obtaining court proceedings which ultimately crippled their quest to appeal against what they perceived as unfavourable judgement.

The result of this was striking off of Irima's application to be allowed to file an appeal out of time. This has in effect sealed Irima's fate and her claim to her ancestral land which her family has been battling for over half a century.

Irima now is supposed to pay more than Sh500,000 as legal fees after her appeal to revise a verdict which had awarded the land to other claimants, flopped.

The land in dispute is about 20km from Embu town where an acre sells at between Sh800,000 to Sh1 million while an eighth touching the tarmac fetches Sh1.5 million.

Njeru, who represented Irima, explained that her client had reached the end of road as her application to be allowed to appeal out of time had been struck out even after she explained the extraordinary circumstances that caused the hitch.

"On December 19, 2019, we applied for certified copies of the proceedings (Embu ELC JR No 32 of 2015) and judgement for purposes of filing an appeal. We obtained the said proceedings on April 28, 2020. We then sought a certificate of delay for purposes of preparing record of appeal. However we were directed to amend the same by indicating that the aforesaid proceedings were ready by March 13," her lawyer explained.

In her letter to the Deputy Registrar, Njeru explained that she had been checking on the process and as at March 13, 2020 was notified that the proceedings had been typed but not proofread.

"... from December all through to March 13, 2020 we were constantly checking on the progress and the said proceedings at ELC registry as at March 13, 2020 we were notified that though the proceedings had been typed, they had not been proof read.

This was the period, Njeru explains that court operations were scaled down due to Covid-19 pandemic and she had to follow up the progress of the typing via phone.

She contends that she was only able to collect the proceedings on April 28 after being informed that the proceedings were ready and could now pay court fees.

However the deputy registrar at the High Court in Embu has a different version. On March 12, 2020, the court Deputy Registrar, J Ndeng'eri wrote to Njeru stating that the proceedings were ready but were only collected in April 2020.

"It is for that reason that I intend to put the record clear the court held the file for typing for a total of 85 days while your office delayed in collecting by a further 47 days," Ndeng'eri wrote.

It is on the account of this delay that Irima's application to be have the judgment that had quashed her rights to her land reversed failed. Consequently she was evicted from the suit land and her chances of taking the dispute the Supreme Court are slim.

"I went out of my way to assist her because she has suffered a lot. I was surprised when her application was struck out because of a technicality which was not of her own making. She cannot afford to go to the Supreme Court and I do not know how she will pay costs of the suit as ordered by the court."

Irima traces the genesis of her woes to the time her grandfather, Kivati wa Ngathika bought the unsurveyed block of land for three cows, three goats and three gourds of beer made from honey. This land was bought from Murugu wa Kabuthi at the dawn of colonialism when barter trade was still in vogue.

This is the land was later passed on to Nthiga Mbogo who in turn left it to Irima's great grandfather Gitumbi Wa Nthiga who later passed it to Kivati wa Ngathika and ultimately left the land to Jeremiah Ngiri, who at the time of his death in 1992 aged 80 had only one child, Irima.

Trouble started when the government started consolidating and giving numbers to parcels of land. In 1972, Ngiri realised his land had been subdivided after numerous visits to the land registry and for some reason failed to be assigned the number for his land.

Ngiri lodged a number of appeals at the Ministry of Lands after the country gained independence. He lost quite a number of them for he had not realised that parcel had been split into four portions and each had been allocated a number and assigned to new owners.

When he took his case to the council of elders he was dissatisfied with the outcome because they ruled against him forcing Ngiri to appeal to the Minister of Lands in 1989.

It would take 10 long years for a verdict to be reached but Ngiri had long died in 1992 bequeathing his only child, Irima an inheritance embroiled in legal dispute.

When one of the claimants, Ibara Mwaniki filed appeal case number 24/2006 at the Ministry of Lands, he swore that his grandfather Kithingaia had bought it for one bull, a heifer, a he goat and four gourds of beer honey from Gichugu of Gekara clan.

However Mbeere North District Commissioner J K Chelimo delivered on December 20, 2010 upheld the decision of Appeal case number 206 of 1999 which had awarded the land to Irima's father Ngiri.

Dissatisfied, a number of claimants who had bought portions of the disputed land went to court and successfully argued that the DC had erroneously awarded Ngiri the land. This triggered a flurry of appeals and applications which have now cost Irima her inheritance.