Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen has issued a stern warning to judicial officers facilitating land-grabbing activities in Kilifi County.
Speaking in Kilifi on Wednesday, April 9, the CS said that judicial officers in the county have played a key role in creating land issues by either issuing conflicting court orders during a land dispute or issuing orders in an adverse position.
Orders of adverse possession allow a person who has unlawfully occupied another person's land for a continuous period of at least 12 years to legally apply for registration rights over the property.
Murkomen said that he intends to engage with Chief Justice Martha Koome to ensure that officers engaging in corruption and aiding land-grabbing in the county are held accountable.
"In law, when you give an order in an adverse position, you are trying to say that a person has been living in the same place for a longer period, and in this case for over ten years, but you find that one person is issued an adverse position for five parcels, and that is unheard of and it is an outright act of corruption," he said.
"I am happy that in the past, some judicial officers have been disciplined for causing this confusion, and I believe that in the national administration of justice, the concerns that have been raised by the citizens will be escalated to the chief justice whom we will work together," he added.
Murkomen has spotlighted that the involvement of corruption in settling land issues in Kilifi, which he noted is a major concern in the county, is the key cause of squatters, invasions, and also family disputes.
Murkomen's statement comes days after Koome assured that she will work collaboratively with the National Intelligence Service (NIS) and the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) to tackle corruption in the country's third arm.
The CJ, who addressed issues facing the judiciary for the first time on Tuesday, March 25, said that the judiciary will be adopting an intelligence-led approach to weed out corrupt officials.
According to Koome, eliminating corruption in the judiciary, which is under intense scrutiny, will elevate its reputation to the public eye.
“We are now complementing the complaints approach with an intelligence-based model that involves working closely with the EACC and the National Intelligence Service,” she announced.
"Our objective is to protect the integrity of the institution and to create a culture where corruption cannot thrive, where corruption is absolutely eradicated,” Koome added.
Koome, who, alongside her Supreme Court colleagues, is fighting to remain in office, affirmed that the Judiciary is a corruption-free zone.
