Timothy Njoya wants ‘step-mother’ evicted from 4-acre family land

Retired PCEA cleric Timothy Njoya has filed evidence in a Nyeri court showing why a woman who claims to be his step-mother should be evicted from a four-acre parcel of land owned by his late father.

Rev Njoya indicates that Mary Wangui Maina is a trespasser on the land in Mukurweini Constituency.

He says he is the registered owner of the property following a certificate of confirmation of grant issued by the High Court in 2004.

Initially the land was registered in the name of his father, Njoya wa Murere, who died of prostate cancer in 1996 aged 88.

Rev Njoya tabled a copy of the land’s title deed. In his witness statement Mr Njoya indicates that Ms Wangui was his father’s house-help, adding that he is not related to her four children.

The statement was filed before Senior Principal Magistrate Phillip Mutua on Thursday through Kamau Kuria Advocates.

Rev Njoya explains that Ms Wangui’s services were terminated in 1990 because Mr Murere needed special medical care for prostate cancer.

A few months after his father died Ms Wangui built a residential hut on the land, he says.

His efforts to sell the parcel of land to Thika Coffee Mills Ltd in 2005 were thwarted after Ms Wangui opposed the transfer. “It was when I was served with her application for revocation of grant in May, 2005, that I leaned that she was claiming to be a widow of my father and that she wanted to inherit it belatedly,” states Mr Njoya.

But Ms Wangui claims that Mr Murere gave her the land.

“That is a lie. The board decided not to consider (her request) and asked us to resolve the dispute in a court of law,” states Mr Njoya.

A court directed Ms Wangui and her family to move out of the land in April 2005, he says.

But Ms Wangui, in her court documents, insists that she was Mr Murere’s wife having started co-habiting with him in 1977 until his death in 1996.

The Muhito village chief issued them with a certificate confirming the union, she indicates.

“On February 5, 1977 the deceased paid a visit to my home in Nyeri and informed my parents that he wanted to marry me,” says Ms Wangui in her affidavit.

She also indicates that clan elders confirmed the marriage under Kikuyu customary law. The case will be heard on November 20.