The Okiek community in Nandi County has distanced itself from a land tussle case filed at the East African Court which accuses the government over the land they lost in the year 2006.
In a press statement issued in Kapsabet town, the community leaders said they were satisfied with the same East African Court ruling last year which asked the government of Kenya to give each Okiek member five acres of land.
After the ruling, some Okiek members from other North Rift Counties declined the court’s ruling, saying the five-acre allocation was too little compared to the number of acres they occupied before the eviction.
The dissatisfied Okiek members appealed the case at the East African Court early this year, pushing to be given more land.
But the Nandi Okiek faction now argues that their displaced members are poor and miserable and that they are satisfied with the court’s ruling last year which directs the government to give each member five acres.
According to them, they want the government to honour the court’s ruling and resettle them to end their pains.
Nandi County Okiek Community Chair Philip Maiyo said the forced eviction in the year 2006 from Serengonik, Nandi Hills, their original land, was a turning point in their lives.
“We are now displaced, miserable and poor since everybody has ignored us,” Mayo said during a press statement in Kapsabet town.
He said they lost all their Serengonik ancestral land, all their administrative units and their administrative leaders were sacked.
“We are pleading with the government to allow us to go back to our ancestral Serengonik land which had schools, churches, police stations and administrative units,” he said.
Maiyo said close to one thousand landless community members were expected to be resettled in their Serengonik ancestral land if the government honoured the court’s ruling.
He said the government, through the National Land Commission, is the only sure way of resettling them after close to 20 years of suffering.
Maiyo further claimed that the historic East African Court ruling last year declared the Okiek Community an ‘environmentally friendly community’ who should be resettled to their land for the purpose of restoration of degraded nature.
“Our people are not employed and we are appealing to the leadership of the County Governments to consider the Okiek community when distributing job positions,” Philip Maswai, a community member, said.
In the 2006 eviction order, the government ordered the eviction of all communities settled in forests for the purpose of restoring its original nature.
But the Okiek Community maintains that their economic activities were nature friendly, given they mainly depended on honey, wild fruit gathering and restricted livestock keeping as their economic mainstay.
By Geoffrey Satia
