Athletics Kenya: Why High Court orders were overturned after nine-year legal battle

On Friday, the Court of Appeal overturned a High Court decision, allowing Athletics Kenya officials to remain in office.

Sometimes, justice takes time — and in the case of Athletics Kenya, it took nearly nine years to reach a final resolution.

In a landmark decision that effectively brings to an end a protracted legal battle over leadership at Athletics Kenya (AK), the Court of Appeal has reversed a 2024 High Court ruling that sought to eject the federation's top officials from office. The appellate judges cited legal missteps and procedural injustices in the High Court's approach as key reasons behind their verdict.

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The High Court, in a judgment delivered by Justice Lawrence Mugambi on March 17, 2024, had ordered all officials and members of the Executive Committee of Athletics Kenya to vacate their positions and barred them from contesting any future elections within the federation.

“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 three-judge bench comprising Justices Pauline Nyamweya, Aggrey Mchelule and George Odunga stated in their ruling delivered last Friday as per Athletics Kenya.

The Court of Appeal found that the High Court had overstepped its bounds by issuing orders that had not been requested by the petitioners. The court emphasized that fairness required that the AK officials should have been given an opportunity to respond to any claims that sought to bar them from future leadership.

Crucially, the judges highlighted a 2017 consent order in which all parties agreed to halt elections that had begun on April 27, 2017. That order remained in place during a transition period in which Athletics Kenya was reviewing its constitution to align with the Sports Act. According to the appellate court, it would be unjust to count that transition period as part of the officials’ cumulative tenure in office.

“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,” the judges ruled.

“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 carry out the transition,” the judgment continued.

The court also faulted the High Court’s interpretation of the Sports Act, specifically Sections 46 and 49, which had been used as grounds for removing the officials. The appellate judges found that those sections do not actually provide for the removal of federation officials.

“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,” they concluded.

The original case was filed by decorated former athlete Moses Tanui, along with other stakeholders, who argued that the officials had overstayed their terms and were thus in office illegally.

However, with this latest ruling, the long-running legal saga that began in 2016 has finally been brought to a close — with the officials staying put.

The decision not only restores the embattled AK leadership but also redefines how transitional periods under legal injunctions are treated in sports governance cases going forward.