President Uhuru Kenyatta has intervened in a land dispute between thousands of residents and the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF).
A report by Nation on Monday, May 24, indicated that the head of state issued an appeal to the locals asking them to withdraw cases they had filed in court.
In a speech delivered by Agriculture CS Peter Munya on his behalf, the Head of State further assured the residents that the state had their best interest at heart and that it would help them preserve their land rights.
In mid-May, some 7,500 families in Isiolo accused the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) 78 Battalion of evicting them from their land in defiance of a court order.
They claimed that KDF put down their structures at night despite a court order which had stopped the evictions pending the hearing and determination of the case.
In his assurance, Uhuru disclosed that the state was already pursuing a plan to move military installations including the 78 Battalion from the land.
He also noted that no resident would lose their land through the tiff but appealed to them to donate some of the idle land to the state.
An earlier court ruling in the tiff had stopped KDF from carrying out further evictions on the 17,000-acre parcel of land located in Tigania East, Meru County, on the border with Isiolo.
The freeze orders had been issued by the Land and Environment Court in a case filed by 13 of the victims.
In court documents, the petitioners claimed that they were being evicted without any justification and that noting that the army had illegally dug trenches on the land.
They also argued that some of the respondents mentioned in the suit, who included Cabinet Secretaries, regularly visited the land with surveyors.
"They have illegally obtained a lease title no. 27098 and that they are using this lease title to legitimise their illegal actions.
"If the actions of the respondents are left to continue, the petitioners, who live on the said land and have developed the same so extensively, will be displaced and be rendered landless," stated the complainants.
The petitioners, the majority of whom are peasant farmers, also complained of being threatened with unknown consequences if they did not vacate from the land in time.
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