Teleposta pensioners win tussle for Sh800m Kisumu land

“Consequently, having failed to establish its claim over the suit land, the appellant's (Kisumu County Government) claim for damages for trespass fell by the wayside. The appeal is for dismissal, and we hereby dismiss it,” the court of appeal in a March 28, 2025, judgment.

The court of appeal's decision is expected to affect several parties that have been sitting on the land, including the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) which has its party offices there.

“The upshot of the foregoing is that the ODM Party and any other party who has been occupying the scheme's premises must now vacate,” Telposta said following the judgment.

The scheme said the judgment is a green light for it to utilise the property to generate revenue, after missing out on millions of shillings over the past 18 years, noting that it is now “at liberty to proceed with the sales that had stalled.”

The land in dispute was originally owned by the defunct Municipal Council of Kisumu even before Kenya gained independence, but the council surrendered its title deed to the commissioner of lands in 1968 for the excision of a portion for road extension.

A series of transfers would later leave the land under the ownership of the Telposta Pension Scheme.

The land was later transferred to the Kenya Post and Telecommunications Corporation (KPTC) in 1980 in a process the municipal council later claimed was fraudulent.

The pension scheme has battled a series of legal battles to protect its land and properties across the country and has evicted illegal occupants in Nairobi and Mombasa in recent months.

In 2002, KPTC transferred the land to Telposta Pension Scheme which continued to manage it and even sold some parcels and housing units, until the municipal council went to court.

Telposta scheme administrator Peter Rotich told the court that after getting the property from KPTC, the scheme surveyed it and subdivided it into 49 parcels, out of which 26 were sold.

The Kisumu Municipal Council moved to court in 2007 where it faulted the transfer of the land to Telposta. The municipal council sued the pension scheme, the Kisumu lands registry, the government, and 15 parties that had bought plots from the pension scheme since 2002.

It told the court that it only realized the land transfer to Telposta in 2004 as it sought clarification on its status from the Kisumu Lands Registry.

By the time the municipal council found out, KPTC had already developed several residential flats on the land and subdivided it, forcing the municipal council to issue a directive halting its revenue department from accepting rate payments from the parcels.

The High Court in 2019 ruled that Telposta Pension Scheme was the legitimate owner, but the Kisumu County Government appealed the decision.

When the matter came for appeal in November last year, it emerged that at the time the land was transferred to the government in 1980, the local authorities minister at the time had removed all members of the Kisumu municipal council and appointed a commission to run its affairs.

“By dint of section 252 (2) of the Act, the Commission could, among other things, exercise all the powers of the appellant.

“Our finding that the surrender of 11th February 1980 was within the confines of the law, answers the appellant's (Kisumu County Government) complaint that its title document was never returned to it after the first surrender,” the judges stated.

The judges said the county was unable to prove fraud in the 1980 land transfer from the municipal council to the government.

The Attorney-General and Treasury told the court that while the land was originally owned by the municipal council, the council “voluntarily surrendered the land to the Government without condition.”

It was then that the government transferred the land to KPTC and later the land ended up under the ownership of Telposta, they said.

Mr Rotich said the scheme stared at huge losses had it lost the property to Kisumu County, since parties it had sold parcels to would have had to be compensated.

“During the course of litigation, the scheme has not generated any revenue from this property. The case also prevented the scheme from any sale or development of the property,” he said.

Following the judgment, the scheme wrote to Kisumu County stating that the county “is now obligated to issue rates clearance certificates and accept rates payment from the Scheme and the Purchasers.”

The county’s refusal to collect land rates had prevented the scheme from selling land parcels since the issuance of land rates clearance certificates is a requirement before a land transaction is concluded.

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