Former Vice President Moody Awori has dragged Kisumu Lands officers into a court battle in which he is tussling with four people over a prime seven-acre parcel of land in Kanyakwar. Mr Awori wants the County Lands registrar and the surveyor enjoined as defendants in the suit which has been before the Environment and Lands Court since April 2013.
He argues this will assist the court to determine ownership and ground position of the suit land. In an amendment to his plaint on November 28, the former Vice President through Hayanga and Company Advocates, argues that since the parcels claimed to be owned by the defendants may be positioned on the same ground where his land is, participation of the two officials in the proceedings would assist the court to settle the dispute and shed light on the legality “or otherwise of the title deeds held by both parties.”
He accuses the duo of fraudulently registering a mutation report used to illegally issue the four with title deeds without conducting due diligence. Their actions, he argues, denied him the legitimacy to use the parcel of land.
In his supporting affidavit, he attached a copy of a title deed drawn on December 23 1999 on parcel number L.R 24740 (I.R No.8245) Kanyakwar. The parcel of land is among several others acquired and put on leaseholds by the Government in 1998, he says. He claims that in October 2010, the four illegally encroached on the land and started developing it, having subdivided it and secured new title deeds between 2008 and 2010.
The former VP says he learnt of the encroachment in 2010 when he sent his son Jeremy Awori to inspect and secure the land only to find the four and other squatters on the land. Private investigators and surveyors established that it was the land he had bought 10 years earlier, he says.
He wants permanent injunction against the trespassers, their eviction and compensation for damages to the property, as well as costs of the suit against the defendants. The VP argues that construction of homes on the land amounted to irreparable wastage of the same.
In a statement deposited in court on March 20, Nyanza regional surveyor Isaiah Ouma said he was conversant with the dispute over ownership of land that is registered as freehold and leasehold.
Ouma says the issue of overlap of the parcel of land can be resolved by a ground visit. He adds however that ancestral claims to the land were cancelled by the National LandsCommission via Gazette Notice Vol CXIX (119) number 97 of July 17, 2017. His statement also shows that inhabitants of the Kanyakwar land were evicted to pave way for expansion of Kisumu.
[Article source: The Standard, by Dalton Nyabundi]
