A three-judge bench has permanently stopped the Judicial Service Commission from sending a removal file on Environment and Land Court Judge Anthony Ombwayo to President William Ruto.
The file rested on claims that the judge had ties to Moi-era businessman Joshua Kulei, took financial benefits, and delivered a ruling that handed Kulei’s company a disputed 50-acre piece of land in Nakuru’s Ngata area.
The decision, delivered on 2 October 2026 by Justices Jemimah Wanza Keli, Onesmus Makau and Jacob Gakeri, ends JSC Petition No. 49 of 2025. It does not clear the allegations. It simply kills the process on technical grounds.
The trouble began when businessman and activist Juma Okumu wrote to the Chief Justice on 14 March 2025 through his lawyers at Keaton & Keaton Advocates. He asked that files handled by Justice Ombwayo be moved to another judge.
The Judicial Service Commission treated the letter as a formal petition for removal under Article 168 of the Constitution. It admitted the matter, found grounds for inquiry, and prepared for an oral hearing that could have led to a recommendation for a tribunal.
Ombwayo went to court on 13 February 2026. The Employment and Labour Relations Court later ruled that the March letter was never a proper petition. It was not addressed to the Commission and did not seek the judge’s removal.
The bench said the Commission could not turn an invalid complaint into a formal process on its own motion. The process, the judges held, violated Ombwayo’s right to fair administrative action and threatened the independence of the judiciary.
“The proper way to challenge a judge’s decision is through appeal or review, not through removal proceedings,” they stated.
A permanent injunction now blocks the Commission from forwarding the file to the President.
At the centre of the dispute sits LR No. 13287/99, roughly 50 acres in Ngata, Nakuru. Omar Mohamed Omar and Patrick Maina Wakanda sued Kulei, his company Sian Enterprises, the Chief Land Registrar and the Agricultural Development Corporation in Nakuru ELC Case E033 of 2023.
They claimed an ADC allotment from the mid-1990s and long occupation until an alleged invasion in October 2023. Kulei’s side traced the land through the late Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaissery, who supposedly bought it from ADC in 1996 for about Sh60,015.
Sian Enterprises then agreed in March 1998 to buy it for Sh5.5 million, paid in two instalments. On 5 August 2025, Justice Ombwayo dismissed the plaintiffs’ case.
He declared Sian the rightful owner, ordered Omar and Wakanda to vacate, permanently barred them from the land, and directed cancellation of documents in their possession.
The Chief Land Registrar’s grant and evidence from local chiefs formed the backbone of that decision.
Okumu had filed his own parallel petition, Nakuru ELC E011 of 2024, seeking cancellation of titles over ADC land he described as illegally acquired. He accused the judge of blocking cross-examination in a way that contradicted the Supreme Court ruling in the Fanikiwa and Sirikwa squatters case.
In a sworn affidavit linked to the JSC petition, Okumu went further. He claimed that on 21 June 2023 the judge used mobile number 0762458130 to demand Sh300,000 from a litigant or representative, with the money to pass through an intermediary named Mr Kariuki.
He produced M-Pesa records showing Sh200,000 sent to a Safaricom number registered to Violet Mumia and Sh100,000 to a till number registered to Omutanyi Esther. Okumu swore that Violet Mumia was a close relative of the judge and that the line had been under the control of another close relative.
He also alleged that Kulei had given the judge Sh30 million, with a further Sh20 million promised once the case ended.
Ombwayo denied receiving any money from litigants.In his 10 July 2025 ruling rejecting a recusal application, Ombwayo himself recorded the claim that Kulei had given him Sh30 million with another Sh20 million still payable. He rejected it outright, saying there was “no scintilla of evidence” that the court had received money from the litigants. He noted that the M-Pesa transactions occurred on 26 June 2023, more than a year before Okumu filed his petition in September 2024, and questioned any link between those transactions and the parties before him.
He refused to step aside, arguing that the court should not be forced into fear by an applicant simply seeking a different judge on a matter already nearing judgment.
A later stay application at the Court of Appeal was dismissed in January 2026. By then the judgment favouring Kulei had already been delivered.
The Kulei matter is not the only time Ombwayo’s conduct has drawn scrutiny. In February 2024 he recused himself from the Nakuru War Memorial Hospital dispute after expressing frustration over police failure to enforce earlier court orders. Appellate courts have also reversed or adjusted outcomes in cases where he sat.
In one matter the Court of Appeal ordered cancellation of disputed titles after finding the acquisition illegal and fraudulent. In another it held that one party held five acres on trust for another. More recently, two similar rulings he issued in a property dispute involving the estate of former Nakuru nominated MP Phillip Kamau, after he had already been transferred from Nakuru, attracted further attention.
They do explain why his record has drawn repeated questions from litigants, lawyers and higher courts.
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