Amu Beach Management Unit v County Land Registrar Lamu & 8 others (Environment & Land Petition 4 of 2023) [2025] KEELC 295 (KLR)

The court found the single cognomen of the petition was the legality of the title held by the 4th and 5th respondents. Affidavit evidence cannot resolve a contested root-of-title dispute; the initial allottee was not joined, and the process of the 1988 allocation could not be impugned in his absence. The proper forum is an ordinary civil suit, per Yaa v District Land Registrar Kilifi and other authorities.

Relying on the Supreme Court's decision in Janmohammed, the court held that while fundamental-rights petitions are generally not subject to limitation, the principle is not absolute and Article 24 permits limitation by law. A claim to title to land falls under Section 7 of the Limitation of Actions Act, and inordinate, unexplained delay defeats the petition.

The Taskforce report did not exhaustively determine the status of the property. No instrument designating the property as a landing site was tabled; the County Government and its predecessor had granted development approvals over it, and the Agency Team report did not expressly state that the Amu Beach landing site sits on Lamu/Block I/1193. The burden rested on the State respondents who failed to discharge it.

The court held that the purchasing respondents could not be expected to explain an allocation done 35 years earlier. The initial allottee, Mohamed Salim Badamana, was not a party. The piecemeal, trial-by-instalments filing of documents did not assist the court in reaching an informed decision on the history of the suit property.