Kerio Valley residents decry rampant land grabbing cases in the region
Fenced off property. File photo
A clan in Kerio Valley, Elgeyo-Marakwet County, has petitioned the National Land Commission (NLC) to intervene and end rampant land grabbing menace by influential individuals in the region.
In a petition addressed to NLC, the Kongot clan claims part of their ancestral land has been grabbed and already sold to private individuals who are not their members.
“It's to our dismay that our birthright is no longer ours. Already 400 acres have been fraudulently hived off and sold off to private individuals without our consent,” reads part of the petition signed by the Kongot Clan Secretary Nicholas Kiplagat.
He said that when they learnt of the fraud, they petitioned then district adjudication officer at Iten, but it did not bore any fruit.
“The adjudication officer erred since he went on to register and allocated the plots to the individuals while having knowledge the land is communally owned by the clan who had not sanctioned the exercise. We seek NLC to come to the disputed land and correct the anomaly,” said Mr Kiplagat.
The clan, made up of six(6) families, raised concern that they are on the verge of being rendered homeless if urgent action is not taken.
“The clan is made up of over 2,000 people and they cannot conduct anything meaningful on the land since a huge chunk has been grabbed and those living on it cannot allow access into it,” he claimed.
According to the clan chairman Joel Kiptunoi,87, they were born and bred in the region and wondered how can a communal land can be privatised.
“Those who registered and issued title deeds should be held accountable, this is fraud and the issue should be dealt with accordingly by NLC. Many genuine residents who were born in the area risk being landless if this is not checked,” protested the elderly man.
Recently, NLC admitted that it was shocked to learn how land cartels were illegally acquiring land.
“It is baffling to find out an entire communally owned land has already been sub-divided and registered among different individuals without the knowledge of the owners who have been already been rendered squatters in their own land,” the commission said in a statement.
NLC has said that it is investigating why communal land was inappropriately sub-divided in the Kerio Valley region.
AVDelta News established that vast land in Kerio is communally owned and lack registration documents making it easy for grabbers to register and sell it off to unsuspecting members of the public.
The locals rely on 'special' stones strategically placed to act as land boundaries between different clans, but over time the beacons have been removed, giving room to ownership disputes.
Trees and other physical features like rivers and hills also acted as clan boundaries, but over time these have also been altered.
