Coast land war: Ruto warning raises fears of fresh invasions

President William Ruto’s renewed intervention in the Coast land question has opened a new front in a decades-old ownership dispute — raising fears that large tracts of unoccupied land could become targets for fresh invasions by genuine landless families, opportunistic individuals and organised groups seeking to exploit the squatter question.

The concern comes after President Ruto warned wealthy landowners in Mombasa against using title deeds to evict residents who have lived on disputed parcels for years, declaring that his government would not allow Coast residents to remain squatters because of ownership disputes.

But while the president’s remarks were directed at resolving historical grievances, they have also revived questions about how the government will distinguish genuine squatters with legitimate historical claims from individuals who may seek to occupy private property in the belief that the state will eventually regularise their occupation.

The Coast has a long and complicated history of land disputes involving absentee landlords, tenancy-at-will, historical injustices, contested titles and allegations of illegal acquisition.

The Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission linked land injustices to colonial-era dispossession, illegal alienation of individual and community land, forceful evictions and land grabbing.

The National Land Commission (NLC) has also identified tenancy-at-will, absentee landlords, insecurity of tenure, disputes and displacement as longstanding problems affecting coastal communities.

In what points to a looming showdown between the government and private land owners in the Coast region, yesterday, President William Ruto said the government will not pay billions of shillings to absentee landlords whose land is occupied by communities on the Coast.

Ruto accused some of the landowners of seeking to exploit the compensation process at the expense of the taxpayer.

“The government of Kenya cannot be blackmailed. You cannot force us using the title deed you hold, which you want to use to evict the residents who live there,” he said.

Instead, Ruto said the government is pursuing a sustainable compensation plan while protecting residents who have occupied the land for years from eviction.

He spoke yesterday at Mama Ngina Waterfront Grounds in Mombasa, where he issued 5,000 title deeds to residents of Dongo Kundu, Waitiki, Mwakirunge, Mikindani and Mafisini settlement schemes.

“We give notice to those refusing to accept the government’s compensation plan: Not a single Kenyan will be evicted from the land they have occupied and called home,” Ruto said.

The titles are part of 300,000 title deeds issued across the Coast region this week to families who have occupied the land for years without ownership documents.

The president said some absentee landlords had rejected the government’s compensation proposals and were instead demanding what he described as exorbitant sums for land targeted for allocation to landless residents.

Late last month, the NLC held public participation forums in Mombasa and Kwale on historical land injustices and launched research into the Coast’s unique tenancy-at-will system.

That history has, however, produced another recurring problem: invasions of land whose ownership is contested or whose owners are absent.

A decade ago, reports documented widespread land invasions and irregular occupations in Kilifi, Mombasa and Taita-Taveta, with thousands of people claiming ancestral rights over properties registered in the names of local and foreign companies.

There have also been cases in which courts have been asked to determine whether long-term occupants are squatters, beneficiaries of historical land injustices or trespassers on privately registered property.

In one case involving land in Taita-Taveta, a private company told the Environment and Land Court that part of its property had been invaded by squatters, while the dispute proceeded through the courts.

The legal battles illustrate the danger of treating every occupant of disputed land as either a victim or an invader before ownership and historical claims have been independently established.

Ruto, however, has taken a firm political position on the immediate problem of residents facing eviction.

“You will not be given billions of money,” he told landowners whom he accused of demanding huge compensation, challenging title holders to produce receipts showing how much they paid for disputed properties.

“What I have told them is, come and let us sit down. We will give you money, but these citizens will not lose those plots,” he said.

The president said the government could not accept a situation in which a title deed was used to remove residents from homes where they had lived for years.

He has pledged to return to Mombasa within two months to issue more title deeds and said the government had allocated Sh10 billion to address the Coast squatter problem, including compensation and settlement measures.

During his current Coast tour, the government is targeting hundreds of thousands of title deeds across the six coastal counties.

Yet the scale of the intervention has created a difficult balancing act.

There are fears that the current directive aimed at settling genuine historical claims might create an incentive for fresh occupation of private property.

The NLC’s current work is expected to play a crucial role. Its historical-injustice process covers claims involving communities and individuals who allege that they were dispossessed through unlawful or unfair processes. The Commission has already handled numerous Coast-related cases involving squatters, tenancy-at-will and contested land ownership.

The stakes are particularly high as major investments arrive in the region.

The proposed Sh2 trillion East African oil refinery in Lamu, together with industrial and infrastructure projects, has already brought land ownership, compensation and resettlement questions back into sharp focus. Residents of Chandavai and Magogoni have gone to court over land earmarked for the refinery, arguing that their families have occupied and developed the area for generations.

Meanwhile, parliament has previously raised concerns over the vulnerability of unoccupied public land at the Coast.

A parliamentary committee found that some Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) parcels had either been invaded by squatters or were vulnerable to grabbing because they were idle or lacked adequate documentation.

The president has been on a weeklong Coastal region tour and announced that the government is targeting to issue a total of 300,000 title deeds across the region during his development tour this week.

“Issued 31,318 title deeds to residents in land settlement schemes across Taveta, Voi and Mwatate constituencies in Taita-Taveta County,” the president posted on his X handle account on October 1, 2026.