A Court of Appeal decision on a 17-year dispute pitting the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA) against the Catholic Diocese of Meru has affirmed that historical occupation of land by an institution does not necessarily confer ownership rights.
This comes after the PCEA Church lost an appeal over a 28-acre parcel of land where it had established a school before the Catholic Diocese of Meru acquired a title deed.
In 2009, the PCEA Church moved to court, accusing the Catholic Diocese of Meru and others of “secretly, irregularly, and fraudulently subdividing and transferring” its land.
The church told the court that it had occupied the land in Imenti South, Meru County, since 1979, after establishing a primary school and a church there. It said it only learnt of the subdivision and transfer of the land in 2008.
On realising this, the PCEA Church sued the County Council of Meru, the Catholic Diocese of Meru (Kanyakine Parish) and Maraa Secondary School, accusing them of fraudulently acquiring the land.
In 2018, the Magistrate’s Court ruled in favour of PCEA, declaring the transfer of parcels Abogeta/Nkachie/1088, 1089 and 1090 to the respondents null and void.
The trial court also cancelled the title deeds, prompting the Meru County Council, the Catholic Diocese of Meru and Maraa Secondary School to appeal to the Environment and Land Court, which reversed the decision.
In her July 2020 judgment, Justice Lucy Mbugua observed that minutes alone do not confer any proprietary interest in land.
Aggrieved by the decision of the Environment and Land Court, PCEA moved to the Court of Appeal, accusing the judge of misapplying the law.
Across the country, courts have been asked to settle bitter disputes involving churches.
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It argued that the court “failed to properly re-evaluate evidence and applied the wrong legal standard in assessing fraud.”
However, the church’s 17-year bid to challenge the Catholic Diocese’s ownership has now ended, with the appellate court upholding the earlier decision that PCEA had failed to prove legal ownership or occupancy rights.
In a judgment delivered on July 3, a three-judge bench sitting in Nyeri affirmed the decision of the Environment and Land Court, which had overturned the trial court’s ruling.
While PCEA relied on 1979 County Council minutes, decades of occupation and its sponsorship of Maraa Primary School on the disputed land to claim proprietary rights, Court of Appeal Justices Wanjiru Karanja, Abida Ali-Aroni and Joel Ngugi reiterated that long physical occupation of trust land cannot, by itself, translate into legal ownership.
“Rights over trust land could not crystallise merely through informal occupation, even if that occupation was coupled with an expectation that the occupied land would eventually be allocated to the occupant,” the Court of Appeal ruled.
The appellate bench noted that PCEA had only produced minutes of the Meru County Council purporting to allocate the land to it.
“The Appellant (PCEA) did not produce a title deed or a registered lease in its favour. Neither did it produce a land register entry reflecting its proprietorship or even a formal allotment instrument coupled with evidence of compliance with allotment conditions sufficient to demonstrate crystallisation of rights. In our view, these absences go to the very root of the Appellant’s claim,” the court ruled.
The judges added: “Indeed, the Appellant did not claim to have any of these documents. Instead, its case has hinged on an invitation to the Court to infer proprietary rights from long occupation and historical usage.”
The court said the council’s resolution, as captured in the minutes, “must be put into effect in order to give rise to a bundle of rights in land capable of being protected.”
The Court of Appeal further found that PCEA had not produced evidence demonstrating non-compliance by public officials or the Catholic Church in subdividing and transferring the suit land.
“The appellant did not produce affirmative evidence demonstrating that the statutory procedures were bypassed or violated. There was no documentary evidence showing the absence of a council resolution, requisite approvals, or administrative processes required under the law. Instead, the Appellant simply invited the Court to infer illegality from evidentiary gaps,” they stated.
On the other hand, the Court of Appeal found that the Catholic Diocese of Meru had demonstrated that it followed the formal statutory procedures in 2005, obtaining approvals from the County Council, the Ministry of Local Government and the Commissioner of Lands.
“The appellant has failed to demonstrate that it acquired a legally cognisable proprietary or beneficial interest in LR No Abogeta/Nkachie/368 capable of defeating the registered interests held by the 2nd and 3rd Respondents.
“Equally, the appellant has failed to establish, to the standard required by law, fraud, illegality, procedural impropriety or corrupt collusion sufficient to impeach the 2nd and 3rd Respondents’ titles. Accordingly, this appeal is hereby dismissed in its entirety,” the appellate bench ruled.
