Billionaire Aliko Dangote wins the first round as a judge refuses to halt his Lamu refinery

A Kenyan judge declined on Monday, Sept. 28 to halt construction of Aliko Dangote's oil refinery at Lamu, two days before President William Ruto is due to break ground on it.

The ruling came hours after 133 residents of Chandavai filed suit at the Malindi Law Courts seeking conservatory orders to stop the work. The judge issued a status quo order instead, which lawyers read as leaving every party free to carry on, including the developers.

What the residents want is not money after the fact. They are asking the court to compel the state to identify everyone genuinely occupying the land as a person with a compensable interest, to value the property properly, and to pay before taking possession.

The land is registered as LR No. 13061 in Chandavai. The families say they have farmed it, grazed livestock on it and built homes, mosques, shrines and family graves there for generations, and that none of that was recognised when the machinery arrived.

Their case rests on a point of Kenyan land law. Not holding a registered title deed does not by itself extinguish an interest in land that qualifies for compensation, and they argue the state has treated the absence of paper as an absence of rights.

The list of defendants is long. The residents have sued the Office of the President, the Cabinet Secretary for Defence, the State Department for Lands and Physical Planning, the Attorney General, the National Land Commission, the LAPSSET Corridor Development Authority, the Lamu County Government and Dangote Industries, along with two contractors.

They set out a sequence. Officers and agents linked to the national government and LAPSSET entered the land with heavy machinery and bulldozers on Aug. 7, 2024, destroying crops and trees without notice or consultation. Soil testing and other preparatory work tied to the refinery began in July this year. On Sept. 10, police officers, chiefs and government officials cleared one of the disputed parcels and told residents it would host the groundbreaking ceremony.

Some were instructed not to interfere and promised compensation for what had been destroyed.

The compulsory acquisition came late and, they say, pointed at the wrong people. Residents learned on about Sept. 20 that the process had begun, and allege it targeted absentee title holders rather than the families actually living there.

Suleiman Ali, Kanywa Kamunde and Zubera Hassan are leading the case. Residents protested outside the courthouse in Malindi on Monday.

The project is not slowing. A ship carrying about 2,930 tonnes of construction machinery docked at Lamu Port on Sept. 26, and Ruto is on an eight-day tour of the coast that ends with Wednesday's ceremony.

Chandavai sits where three separate development plans meet. The LAPSSET corridor runs through it, military infrastructure around Manda Bay sits beside it, and the refinery is now going up on it.

The plant is designed to process 700,000 barrels of crude a day, which would make it the largest in East Africa and second on the continent only to Dangote's plant in Lagos. Kenya's government puts the cost at about 2 trillion shillings and expects 60,000 jobs, with roughly 70% of the money borrowed. Dangote Industries is developing it with the Africa Finance Corporation.

Dangote also offered Ruto half the electricity from a 1,000 megawatt power plant he intends to build alongside it, during the president's visit to Lagos on Friday.

Nothing in the residents' case has been tested. The court has scheduled further proceedings.