NAIROBI, Kenya, March 21, 2025 – The Court of Appeal has set aside the High Court orders issued in the judgment by Justice Mugambi on 17th March 2024 in which the High Court had directed the officials and Executive Committee of Athletics Kenya to vacate office following the successful appeal by the federation.
In a Judgement delivered on Friday, Justices Pauline Nyamweya, Aggrey Mchelule and George Odunga noted that the orders barring the executive committee members from running for office had not been sought in the High Court by the Petitioners and, consequently, the officials and Executive Committee members had not been accorded a chance to respond to them.
“In the premises, we allow the appeal and set aside the orders directing the officials and Executive Committee of the appellant to forthwith vacate office and that they are ineligible to contest for any position in the organization”, the Judges stated in their judgment.
The Court of Appeal further held that while it was true that in directing the officials to vacate the office the learned Judge found that they had been in the office for the cumulative period of 8 years, on 10th May 2017 the parties recorded a consent staying the conduct of the elections that had commenced on 27th April 2017 until the hearing of the petition.
During the period of review of the appellant’s constitution, the law preserved the appellant’s existing status for the purposes of transition.
“It cannot therefore be said that during the said period, a period when the said officials had to be in the office, courtesy of a legal provision, in order to effect the transition, the said officials could be said to have been in the office for the purposes of computing their tenure in the office. To do so would presume that the said officials and executive committee members ought to have vacated their offices with the result that there would have been no one in the office to ccarryout the transition”, the Judges noted.
In the view of the Judges, that could not have been the intention of the drafters of the Sports Act.
The Judges further added:
“In any case, we agree that sections 46 and 49 of the Act which the learned Judge relied upon to remove the appellant’s officials from office did not provide for their removal. Accordingly, the learned Judge erred in relying on irrelevant legal provisions in granting the orders removing the appellant’s officials and executive committee members from the office.”
The case was filed by athlete Moses Tanui alongside other individuals who had sought to have the officials declared illegally in office.
With the said judgment, this dispute that has been in court for close to 9 years has now been concluded.
