Supreme Court upholds Nubian community's Kibos land rights as Kenya Railways appeal fails

Kenya's Supreme Court has dismissed Kenya Railways Corporation's appeal over the eviction of about 3,500 Nubian residents from a land parcel in Kibos, Kisumu County, upholding findings by two lower courts that the residents' constitutional rights were violated. The judgment clears the way for affected community members to pursue civil compensation for their demolished homes, schools, mosques and health facilities through a separate suit.

The bench held that the dispute was not about formal land title but about whether the corporation breached the residents' rights when it evicted them from land believed to be public property reserved for railway operations. "What we are dealing with here, is an occupation of public land by a whole community, on the basis of a licence granted to them by the then colonial government. A licence that was never extinguished by state action of succeeding governments," the court said.

The dispute dates back to 1937, when the British colonial administration moved about 53 Nubian families from Old Kisumu, now the site of Kisumu International Airport, to Kibos. The residents said the families received temporary occupation licences in 1938 and remained on the land for generations. In 2012 the Ministry of Lands prepared development plans and formally recognised the settlement, with no objections lodged within the 60-day window, and in February 2015 the Director of Physical Planning announced the Kibos Informal Settlement Upgrading Scheme intended to lead to letters of allotment and eventually a community land title deed.

Kenya Railways argued that the land formed part of the Kibos Railway Station reserve and had vested in the railway system under legal notices issued in 1963 and 1986, that the licences conferred no ownership and that long occupation could not convert reserved public land into private property. The corporation issued a seven-day eviction notice on March 9, 2020, and residents said demolition took place at 3am on the night of February 5 and 6, 2021, during the Covid-19 curfew, in disregard of a subsisting conservatory court order and without the eviction notice the National Land Commission was required to issue.

The Environment and Land Court ruled for the residents in August 2021 after visiting the site, finding that the community had been lawfully settled and held protectable interests arising from the licences, and that the eviction breached their rights to property, housing and fair administrative action under Articles 40 and 43 of the Constitution. The Court of Appeal upheld that judgment in March 2025, finding that statutory safeguards had not been followed. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and the rights group Kituo Cha Sheria supported the residents' case.