JUDGMENT OF THE COURT
1. The appellants filed before the High Court of Kenya at Malindi, a representative suit on their own behalf and on behalf of 308 others regarding the ownership and occupation of land described as LR No. 5046/1 and LR No.5024/1 (the suit land), situated in Kilifi County. They alleged that the respondent, a body corporate and a constituent college of Kenyatta University, had threatened to evict them from the suit land, despite the same having been lawfully allocated to the appellants.
2. To put this matter in perspective, a brief background is necessary. According to the appellants, the Government of Kenya, under a donor funded squatter resettlement program proposed to allocate land to squatters in Kilifi. The appellants were among the proposed beneficiaries. The land was allocated and subdivision thereof done, with the appellants settling on part of the land sometime in 1995 and subsequently developing the premises at great expense; even as they awaited the issuanc…