Kidenye & 3 others (Suing on Behalf of Over 200 Families of Yare Community) v Land Adjudication & Settlement Officer - Samburu & 3 others (Sued as the Chairperson of the Lkuroto Lands Committee) (Environment and Land Petition E002 of 2022) [2026] KEELC 4426 (KLR)

The adjudication section was established in 1991, the register completed in 2000, and a Certificate of Finality issued in 2009, with 26 objections heard under the Act's elaborate dispute resolution framework. The petitioners arrived in 1996, lodged no claim before the adjudication committee, arbitration board, objection proceedings or ministerial appeal, and their first complaints came in 2018. Constitutional litigation cannot resurrect matters duly resolved through due process.

Membership is determined by the group itself through its register, which continues to be updatable after closure of the adjudication register. Some Yare members did enter the register, showing the route was open. The petitioners, however, asserted ownership rights in complaints to authorities rather than seeking registration through the group's processes, and their grievances were raised late, mostly after the title issued in May 2021.

Relying on the Supreme Court's decision in Getao v Mokare, the court explained that group ranches under the repealed Land (Group Representatives) Act hold land as corporate bodies on behalf of members in equal undivided shares, being a tenancy in common. Once registered with title in 2021, section 24 of the Land Registration Act conferred absolute ownership on the group, subject only to section 28 overriding interests.

The petitioners claimed entitlement based on a presidential declaration of the KDF land to the community, but produced no documentary evidence. The Chief Land Registrar raised the KDF encroachment, the land was degazetted and KDF reallocated land in Samburu North before the title issued to the group ranch. The benefit therefore accrued to persons within the adjudication section, not to everyone then occupying the area.

The petitioners were welcomed onto the land by their 'brothers' and remained in permissive occupation without integrating with the group or progressing to any recognised tenure. Occupation without title can only mature into rights through a known legal regime such as resettlement programmes, regularization, adverse possession or transfer. None applied, so no ownership claim can be asserted on the basis of occupation.

Displaced persons have statutory channels for registration and settlement assistance, but the petitioners adduced no evidence of channelling their grievances through that framework. Their entitlement claim founded purely on IDP status therefore failed, since settlement programmes are administered by the Commission in collaboration with governments rather than by compelling a private group ranch to share its land.