On Wednesday, June 8, the family of the late Josiah Mwangi (JM) Kariuki, a former Nyandarua North Member of Parliament, stunned their neighbors by handing them 90 acres of their 808-acre farm in Ol Kalou, Nyandarua County.
A family member told the reporters that the decision was made to provide the 160 households legal rights to the land on the Riverside Farm, which they had occupied as squatters.
Instead of evicting the families from the late MP’s estate as ordered by the court, JM Kariuki’s kin partitioned the land among the families, surprising the neighbors.
“I am overjoyed because we have been at war with these families over this land for many years on end. However, today is a good day because after discussions, we have decided to gift them the land,” he told the press.
Each of the family households was given a title deed, which declared them to be the legal owners of the now-divided property.
They were relieved by the transfer, since they had been unsure whether they would have a permanent home.
“We have been living on JM Kariuki’s land since 1992 without any assurance that we owned the land. Today, we can proudly say that we own the land and we can now sleep peacefully,” one new land owner stated.
The late MP’s kin had attempted to oust them from the land for the previous 30 years, with the new land owners alleging that it had been assigned to them by the lawmaker before he died.
Ndiritu Muchiri, the secretary of the squatters’ association, had appealed with the court to allow them to remain on the land because it was their sole source of income and the only home they had known for nearly five decades.
Governor James Nyoro of Kiambu presided over the presentation of 50,000 title deeds to residents living in informal settlements across the county as part of the Kenya Informal Settlement Improvement Program.
Residents will participate in the initiative, which is run in collaboration with the Ministry of Lands and the National Lands Commission.
The program, according to Nyoro, aims to end ongoing land disputes by providing residents with legal documentation and improving living circumstances.
“We will then embark on constructing roads, install street lights, fit a proper water and sewerage system because people living in informal settlements must lead lives like others,” the county boss stated.
