https://new.kenyalaw.org/akn/ke/judgment/kehc/2026/12607

Mwaruwaga alias Mohamed Bakari v Consolbase Transfreight Logistics (Civil Appeal E370 of 2024) [2026] KEHC 12607 (KLR) (7 August 2026) (Judgment) Neutral citation: [2026] KEHC 12607 (KLR) Republic of Kenya In the High Court at Mombasa Civil Appeal E370 of 2024 J Ngaah, J August 7, 2026 Between Mohamed Bakari Mwaruwaga alias Mohamed Bakari alias Moh'd Bakari Appellant and Consolbase Transfreight Logistics Respondent (Being an appeal from the judgment of Hon. L. K. Sindani, Principal Magistrate, in Mombasa CMCC No. E1758 of 2022 delivered on 17th October 2024) Judgment Introduction 1.This is a first appeal. It arises from the judgment of the trial court (Hon. L. K. Sindani, Principal Magistrate) delivered on 17th October 2024 in Mombasa CMCC No. E1758 of 2022. In that suit the appellant, who was the plaintiff, sued the respondent, the defendant, for damages arising from a road traffic accident in which the appellant, a pedestrian, was knocked down and injured by the respondent's motor vehicle. 2.The trial court found for the appellant on quantum but apportioned liability equally, at 50:50, between the appellant and the respondent, and entered judgment for the appellant for the net sum arrived at after that deduction. It is that apportionment, and that apportionment alone, which the appellant challenges. Quantum is not in issue; the respondent has filed no cross-appeal. 3.The single question of substance is whether, on the evidence actually placed before the trial court, there was any proper basis in law or in fact for holding the appellant 50% to blame. A preliminary objection touching the competence of the appeal must, however, be resolved first. The claim in the trial court 4.By a plaint dated 6th December 2022 the appellant's case was that on 18th March 2022, along the Nairobi–Mombasa highway at or near the Miritini stage, he was lawfully crossing the road as a pedestrian when the respondent's motor tanker, which was being driven without due care and at a speed excessive in the circumstances, failed to slow down and knocked him down, occasioning him grievous injuries. 5.The injuries were serious. They comprised, among others, fractures of the metacarpals and phalanges of the right hand and degloving injuries to the right hand and the right leg and knee. The appellant particularised negligence against the respondent and prayed for general and special damages. The respondent filed a defence denying liability and, in the alternative, pleading contributory negligence on the part of the appellant. The evidence at the trial 6.The appellant called three witnesses. PW1 was Dr. Kiema, who examined the appellant and assessed his permanent incapacity, and produced his medical report. PW2 was the police officer. He was candid that he was not the investigating officer, that he had not visited the scene, and that he was merely relaying the entry in the Occurrence Book, which confirmed that the accident had occurred at the Miritini stage. He could not, from his own knowledge, confirm or deny the presence of a marked crossing at the point of impact, precisely because he had neither investigated the accident nor been to the scene. He also confirmed that no charge had been preferred against the respondent's driver. 7.PW3 was the appellant himself. He adopted his witness statement and testified that at the point where he was crossing there was a bump and a zebra crossing, that the respondent's driver did not slow down, and that he was struck when he was almost done crossing the road. He was, on the record, the only eyewitness to the accident. 8.The respondent called no witness. When the matter came up for the defence hearing on 6th February 2024, the respondent's advocate indicated that the respondent had no witness to call, produced a medical report by consent, and closed the defence case. Not a single witness spoke on the respondent's behalf to the manner in which the accident occurred, and nothing was placed before the court to contradict or qualify the appellant's account of how he came to be knocked down. The judgment of the trial court 9.The trial court expressly recognised, and correctly so, that the appellant's case had not been rebutted by the respondent. Having so found, it nevertheless apportioned liability at 50:50. The reasoning by which it reached that apportionment lies at the heart of this appeal. 10.Two strands of that reasoning are impugned. First, the trial court reasoned that although the appellant's evidence was unrebutted, he had failed to produce evidence, other than his own oral testimony, to establish that he was hit at a zebra crossing. Secondly, the trial court drew from the fact that the respondent's driver had not been charged with any traffic offence the inference that there existed no proper case warranting traffic charges against the driver, and, by extension, no clear negligence on his part. It also reasoned that the appellant was at a vantage point from which he could have evaded the accident. On that reasoning the appellant was held equally to blame. 11.On quantum, the trial court assessed general damages at Kshs 800,000/=; future medical expenses at Kshs 144,000/=; and special damages at Kshs 97,230/=, a total of Kshs 1,041,230/=. Applying the 50% deduction, it entered judgment for the appellant for the net sum of Kshs 520,615/=, with costs and interest on the net award from the date of judgment. 12.Those figures are confirmed by the certified decree issued by the trial court on 17th December 2025 and now on the record. To that decree, and to the objection built upon its earlier absence, I shall return. The appeal 13.Aggrieved, the appellant preferred this appeal by a memorandum of appeal dated 28th October 2024. The grounds, reduced to their essence, mount a single, focused attack: that the trial court's apportionment of liability at 50:50 was against the weight of the evidence and had no legal foundation, the respondent having offered no evidence whatever in rebuttal, and that the apportionment offended the burden and standard of proof under section 107 of the Evidence Act (Cap. 80). The appellant prays that the appeal be allowed, the apportionment set aside, and liability entered wholly against the respondent, with costs of both courts. The rival submissions 14.Both parties filed written submissions, which I have considered in full. I summarise them, and the authorities cited, only so far as is necessary to explain my decision. The appellant's submissions 15.The appellant, by submissions dated 20th August 2025, took the court through the record. He relied on his own eyewitness account of the crossing and the driver's failure to slow; on the concession of the police officer that he had not investigated the accident; and on the defence closing its case without calling any witness. The heart of the argument was that the trial court, having accepted that the appellant's case was unrebutted, then placed on him a burden higher than the law requires, namely a burden to corroborate, by evidence beyond his own sworn testimony, that he was struck at a marked crossing. His oral testimony, being unrebutted, was itself the proof required of him under section 107 of the Evidence Act. 16.The appellant further submitted that the trial court erred in extrapolating from the mere fact that the driver had not been charged that there was no negligence to answer for. In support he relied on the decision of Aburili, J. in Nairobi HCC Civil Case No. 318 of 2012, Mary Njeri Murigi v Peter Macharia & Gitundu Mwaura, a closely analogous case of a pedestrian struck at a crossing where the defendant led no evidence and the driver was not charged. At paragraph 40 the learned Judge observed:“On whether the deceased should shoulder any blame, I find that he should not for reasons that there is no general rule that a pedestrian who is knocked while crossing the road at a designated place by a speeding reckless driver must have contributed to the occurrence of the accident just because he was to be found on the road at that material time. Roads are for use by motorists and pedestrians as well. It is the duty of motorists to drive with due care and attention and observe all the traffic rules and regulations regarding road signs and right of way for pedestrians who have equal rights to use the roads as designated.” 17.He also relied on paragraphs 43 and 44 of the same judgment, to the effect that a failure to charge a driver is not proof that he was not negligent, and that a failure by the police to investigate and charge is evidence of police lethargy rather than of the driver's innocence; and on paragraph 45, in which Aburili, J. adopted the reasoning of Odunga, J. in Linus Nganga Kiongo & 3 Others v Town Council of Kikuyu [2012] eKLR (itself citing Motex Knitwear Mills Ltd and Autar Singh Bahra & Another v Raju Govindji HCCC No. 548 of 1998) on the consequences of a party's failure to call evidence:“Although the defendant has denied liability in an amended defence and counterclaim, no witness was called to give evidence on his behalf. That means that not only does the defence rendered by the 1st plaintiff's case stand unchallenged but also that the claims made by the defendant in his defence and counterclaim are unsubstantiated... Where a party fails to call evidence in support of its case, that party's pleadings remain mere statements of fact since in so doing the party fails to substantiate its pleadings. In the same vein the failure to adduce any evidence means that the evidence adduced by the plaintiff against them is uncontroverted and therefore unchallenged.” 18.The appellant accordingly prayed that the appeal be allowed with full costs in both courts. The respondent's submissions 19.The respondent, by submissions filed on 29th October 2025, advanced its case on three fronts: a preliminary objection to competence, a challenge to the sufficiency of the appellant's proof, and, in the alternative, a defence of the 50:50 apportionment. 20.On competence, the respondent submitted that the appeal ought to be struck out because, when it was filed, the appellant had not extracted and filed the decree appealed from, contrary to Order 42 rule 13(4) of the Civil Procedure Rules. This, it was urged, is a jurisdictional and not a merely procedural defect. Reliance was placed on the Supreme Court's decision in Bwana Mohamed Bwana v Silvano Buko Bonaya & 2 Others [2015] eKLR, where at paragraph 41 the Court held that without a complete record an appeal is incompetent and that an incompetent appeal divests a court of jurisdiction; and on the Court of Appeal's decision in Chege v Suleiman [1988] eKLR, where it was held that the failure to extract the decree is a jurisdictional point, since an appeal lies only against a decree or order formally extracted as the basis of the appeal. 21.On the first appellate court's duty, the respondent cited Kenya Power & Lighting Company Ltd v E K O & Another [2018] eKLR for the three familiar principles: that the court must reconsider and re-evaluate the evidence and reach its own conclusions; that it must give due allowance to the trial court's advantage of seeing and hearing the witnesses; and that it is not open to it to interfere merely because it might have reached a different result. 22.On the merits, the respondent's central submission was that the appellant failed to discharge his burden of proof on a balance of probabilities, and that the evidential burden never shifts to the defendant merely because the defence calls no witness. It invoked section 107 of the Evidence Act and the classical definition of negligence in Blyth v The Company of Proprietors of the Birmingham Waterworks, together with Halsbury's Laws of England, Maria Ciabaitaru M'mairanyi & Others v Blue Shield Insurance Company Ltd [2005] 1 EA 280 (as cited in Patrick Omutere v Accurate Steel Mills Ltd [2019] eKLR), Evans Mogire Omwansa v Benard Otieno Omolo & Another [2016] eKLR, and Freda Stores Ltd v National Oil Corporation of Kenya Ltd [2017] eKLR. The thrust of these authorities, the respondent said, is that it is not enough for a plaintiff to say his evidence is uncontroverted; he must positively prove his case, and a plaintiff who does not do so is not entitled to judgment simply because the defendant did not respond. 23.The respondent further submitted that none of the appellant's three witnesses could coherently establish the negligent act; that the police officer was not the investigating officer and no charge was preferred; and that the appellant ought to have called eyewitnesses or produced a police sketch map. From the non-production of the sketch map it urged the court to draw an adverse inference, relying on Timsales Ltd v Harun Thuo Ndungu [2010] eKLR (citing Nguku v Republic [1985] KLR 412), that the withheld evidence would have been unfavourable to the appellant. It contended that the appellant crossed the road without keeping a lookout, made no effort to avoid the accident, and was the author of his own misfortunes, relying on Rosemary Kaari Murithi v Benson Njeru Muthitu & 3 Others [2020] eKLR. Primarily, it urged that the appeal be dismissed on the footing that the appellant was wholly to blame; alternatively, that the 50:50 apportionment be upheld. It sought costs in either event. Analysis and determination The duty of a first appellate court 24.On this the parties are agreed, and rightly so. As a first appellate court my duty is to reconsider the evidence adduced before the trial court, evaluate it afresh, and draw my own conclusions, bearing in mind that I neither saw nor heard the witnesses and giving due allowance to the advantage the trial court enjoyed in that regard: Selle & Another v Associated Motor Boat Co. Ltd [1968] EA 123; and, as the respondent's own authority, Kenya Power & Lighting Co. Ltd v E K O & Another (supra). Where, however, the impugned conclusion does not turn on the demeanour of witnesses but on inferences drawn from established or undisputed facts, this court is in as good a position as the trial court to draw its own inferences. 25.That distinction governs this appeal. The finding under attack is not a finding of primary fact turning on credibility. The trial court believed the appellant and accepted that his evidence was unrebutted. The apportionment of 50% against him is the product of inferences drawn from undisputed facts, and it is that inferential reasoning which this court is entitled, and bound, to examine. The preliminary objection on the decree 26.I take the preliminary objection first, for if it succeeds the merits do not arise. The general principle for which the respondent contends is sound and I do not doubt it. An appeal is directed at a decree or order, and a record that omits the decree is, to that extent, incomplete. I have myself, in a consistent line of rulings, struck out first appeals where the decree was wholly absent and no attempt had been made to supply it, and I would do so again in a proper case. 27.But the objection must be measured against what has actually happened. When the respondent filed its submissions on 29th October 2025 the decree had not yet been extracted, and the objection was, at that moment, well founded. That state of affairs has since been overtaken by events. The appellant has extracted the decree, which was certified and issued by the trial court on 17th December 2025, and has placed it before this court by a Supplementary Record of Appeal dated 18th December 2025, duly certified. The decree was therefore on the record, and available to the respondent, before the hearing of the appeal. The defect the objection identified has been cured. 28.The respondent's authorities do not compel a different result. Bwana Mohamed Bwana and Chege v Suleiman were both concerned with the jurisdiction of the appellate courts under the Court of Appeal Rules and section 66 of the Civil Procedure Act, a regime in which the right of second appeal lies only against a decree or order formally extracted, and in which the completeness of the record is treated as going to jurisdiction. A first appeal from a subordinate court to the High Court is governed by a different regime. The right of first appeal is conferred by section 65 of the Civil Procedure Act and is exercised by the filing of a memorandum of appeal within time under Order 42 rule 1; the competence of the appeal is established by that step. Order 42 rule 13(4), on which the respondent relies, is a pre-hearing, case-management provision addressed to the judge: it directs that, before allowing the appeal to go for hearing, the judge shall be satisfied that the listed documents are on the record, and it expressly contemplates both that documents not in a party's possession may be supplied and that the judge may dispense with the production of any document that is not relevant. It is not framed, and does not operate, as a jurisdictional bar. 29.I am fortified in this view by Article 159(2)(d) of the Constitution and by the overriding objective in sections 1A and 1B of the Civil Procedure Act, which enjoin this court to administer justice without undue regard to procedural technicalities and to give effect to the just, expeditious and proportionate determination of proceedings. To strike out an otherwise competent first appeal on account of an omission that has been made good, before the hearing and without prejudice to the respondent, would exalt form over substance. Chege v Suleiman, decided in 1988 under the Court of Appeal Rules and before the current constitutional and statutory imperatives, does not require me to do so; and my own line of authority striking out appeals applies where the decree remains wholly absent, which is not this case. The preliminary objection is therefore overruled. A threshold consequence of the absence of a cross-appeal 30.Before turning to the merits, one procedural matter narrows the field. The respondent's primary invitation is that the appeal be dismissed on the footing that the appellant was wholly to blame. That is not a request to uphold the judgment; it is a request to vary it in the respondent's favour, by reducing the appellant's share of liability from 50% to nothing. A respondent who has not cross-appealed may support the decree on any ground open on the record, but may not ask the appellate court to alter it to his own advantage. The respondent filed no cross-appeal. Its primary submission is therefore not open to it. The most the respondent can properly seek on this appeal is the preservation of the 50:50 apportionment; and it is to the tenability of that apportionment that I now turn. The burden of proof and the effect of the respondent calling no evidence 31.I accept, without reservation, the principle at the centre of the respondent's merits case. Under sections 107 and 108 of the Evidence Act the burden of proving negligence lay on the appellant as plaintiff, and it lay there throughout; it did not shift to the respondent merely because the respondent called no witness. It is not enough for a plaintiff to say that his evidence is uncontroverted; he must adduce evidence sufficient to prove his case on a balance of probabilities. That is the principle in Evans Mogire Omwansa and in Freda Stores, and I apply it. 32.But the principle presupposes a plaintiff whose evidence is insufficient. It has no application to a plaintiff who has led sufficient evidence. In Freda Stores, Ochieng, J. put the matter in terms the respondent quoted only in part:“On the other hand, if the plaintiff does not provide sufficient evidence to prove his case, then the defendant is under no obligation to offer any answer. In effect, when the plaintiff does not prove his claim, he would not be entitled to judgment just because the defendant did not respond to the claim.” 33.The words "if the plaintiff does not provide sufficient evidence" carry the whole weight of the passage. Their necessary corollary, which the respondent's submission omits, is that where the plaintiff does provide sufficient evidence, the defendant's silence is not without consequence: the plaintiff's evidence stands uncontroverted and, if credible, may found judgment in full. So too in Evans Mogire Omwansa, the appellant's claim failed not because his evidence was merely uncontradicted but because his own account was internally deficient on causation and uncorroborated on a point that called for corroboration. Neither case assists a respondent confronted with a coherent and unshaken eyewitness account. 34.Here the appellant did not rest on his pleadings. He gave sworn, first-hand evidence that he was lawfully crossing at a marked crossing when the respondent's tanker, without slowing, knocked him down as he was almost across. That is affirmative evidence going directly to causation and to the driver's want of care. It was tested in cross-examination and emerged unshaken. It raised a prima facie case calling for an answer. The respondent gave none. On the authority of Linus Nganga Kiongo & 3 Others v Town Council of Kikuyu and Autar Singh Bahra & Another v Raju Govindji, quoted above, the appellant's evidence thereupon stood as uncontroverted and unchallenged, and was capable of proving his case to the hilt. The trial court recognised this principle in words but departed from it in substance. The first error: requiring corroboration of the crossing 35.The trial court required the appellant to produce evidence, beyond his own testimony, that he was struck at a zebra crossing. This confuses an absence of corroboration with proof to the contrary. The law imposed on the appellant no duty to corroborate his own sworn testimony. A single credible witness may prove a fact, and the believed evidence of a competent witness is itself proof of that fact. The Court of Appeal made the point emphatically in Jacob Ayiga Maruja & Another v Simeon Obayo [2005] eKLR, rejecting the notion that a fact capable of being spoken to orally can be proved only by documents or by additional witnesses. To demand of the appellant more than his believed and unrebutted testimony was to hold him to a standard the law does not prescribe. 36.The only other witness who might have spoken to the crossing was the police officer, and he disclaimed any knowledge of the scene. His inability to confirm the crossing was not evidence that there was no crossing; it was the neutral consequence of his not having investigated the accident. The trial court treated the appellant's want of corroboration as if it were affirmative proof that no crossing existed. That was a misdirection. The adverse-inference argument and the missing sketch map 37.The respondent urged an adverse inference, under Timsales Ltd v Harun Thuo Ndungu and Nguku v Republic, from the appellant's failure to produce a police sketch map or further eyewitnesses. The presumption in those authorities operates against a party who withholds evidence that is within its own power or possession. It has no application to a police sketch map or a police file, which lie in the custody of the police and not of the appellant. A litigant cannot have an inference drawn against him for failing to produce a document he is in no position to produce. As for further eyewitnesses, the appellant was himself the eyewitness, and, as already explained, his single credible account required no corroboration. 38.If anything, the respondent's own authority points the other way. In Kenya Power & Lighting Co. Ltd v E K O & Another the court acted on the unchallenged testimony of the sole eyewitness and drew an adverse inference against the party which, being in possession of an inspection report, failed to produce it. The party that led no evidence here was the respondent. To the extent any adverse inference is available on these facts, it operates against the respondent's silence, not against the appellant's reliance on the best evidence open to him. The second error: apportioning blame with no evidence of contribution 39.This is the more fundamental error. Contributory negligence is an affirmative defence. It must be specifically pleaded and it must be proved by the party who asserts it. A plaintiff does not bear the burden of disproving his own contribution; the defendant bears the burden of establishing it. The respondent, having pleaded contributory negligence, was obliged to lead evidence from which the court could find, on a balance of probabilities, that the appellant failed to take reasonable care for his own safety and that such failure was a cause of his injuries. It led none. 40.The propositions on which the respondent's submissions rest, that the appellant crossed "without being on the lookout", that he "did not put any effort to avoid" the accident, and that he was "at a vantage point to evade" it "yet he saw the motor vehicle coming", are not drawn from any evidence. They are assertions. No witness deposed to them; nothing in the appellant's own evidence supports them; to the contrary, his unrebutted account was that he was almost across a marked crossing when a vehicle that did not slow struck him. A respondent cannot supply by submission the very facts it failed to establish by evidence. Pleadings, cross-examination and submissions are not evidence (see Autar Singh Bahra & Another v Raju Govindji (supra); Linus Nganga Kiongo & 3 Others v Town Council of Kikuyu supra). In apportioning 50% against the appellant on this basis the trial court reversed the burden of proof, requiring the appellant to exonerate himself rather than requiring the respondent to inculpate him. As Aburili, J. put it in Mary Njeri Murigi, apportionment is only plausible where there is some material evidence to show how the injured party contributed to the accident. Here there was none. 41.The authorities the respondent marshalled on this head do not fill the evidential void. Blyth v Birmingham Waterworks, Halsbury's Laws of England, and Kenya Power & Lighting Co. Ltd v Mathew Kabage Wanyiri state uncontroversial principles about the standard of care and the incidence of the burden of proof; they presuppose, and do not supply, evidence of a breach. Kenya Power & Lighting Co. Ltd v Mathew Kabage Wanyiri was moreover an employer-and-employee case in which the finding of contribution rested on the injured party's own admissions in cross-examination, admissions with no counterpart here. Rosemary Kaari Murithi v Benson Njeru Muthitu is further still from the point. It concerned a pillion passenger who voluntarily boarded an overloaded boda-boda:“I am also inclined to find that a person who voluntarily gets on a boda boda when he/she finds that there are more than one should equally be held accountable and hence culpable.” 42.That reasoning fastens on the claimant's own proven conduct in exposing himself to a known and obvious risk. It has nothing to say about a pedestrian struck at a marked crossing by a vehicle that failed to slow, where no evidence of the pedestrian's conduct was led at all. The case is inapposite.The third error: treating the non-charging of the driver as proof of no negligence 43.The trial court inferred from the absence of a traffic charge against the respondent's driver that there was no proper case of negligence against him. That inference is unsound for two reasons. First, the standard of proof in a criminal prosecution is proof beyond reasonable doubt, higher than the balance of probabilities that governs this civil claim; a failure to bring, or even to test, the higher standard says nothing about whether the lower standard is met. Secondly, the decision whether to charge lies with the police and the prosecuting authority, not with the appellant, and a failure to charge may bespeak police inaction as readily as innocence. This is the reasoning of Aburili, J. at paragraphs 43 and 44 of Mary Njeri Murigi, that a failure to charge is not proof of the absence of negligence and that a failure by the police to investigate and act is evidence of police lethargy. I respectfully adopt it as directly applicable here. 44.For completeness, the respondent's suggestion that the appellant came to "a court of equity with unclean hands" is misconceived. This is a common-law claim in negligence for damages, not a suit invoking the equitable jurisdiction of the court, and the clean-hands maxim has no application to it. Interference with the apportionment 45.An apportionment of liability is not immune from review merely because it is described as an exercise of discretion. Where it proceeds from a misapprehension of the burden of proof, or is made in the absence of any evidence to support it, it is made on a wrong principle, and this court is both entitled and obliged to interfere. This is such a case. 46.Drawing the threads together: the trial court, having correctly found the appellant's evidence to be unrebutted, thereafter erred in three related respects. It demanded of the appellant a corroboration the law did not require; it apportioned blame against him in the total absence of any evidence of contributory negligence, thereby reversing the burden of proof; and it drew from the non-charging of the driver an inference the evidence could not bear. Once those errors are corrected, only one conclusion is open on this record. The appellant proved, by evidence that was never controverted, that the respondent's driver was wholly to blame for the accident. There is no evidential foundation for any apportionment against the appellant. 47.I therefore find and hold that liability for the accident of 18th March 2022 rests wholly on the respondent, and I substitute for the trial court's finding of 50:50 a finding of 100% liability against the respondent. 48.Quantum was not challenged and there is no cross-appeal. The trial court's assessment stands undisturbed: general damages of Kshs 800,000/=; future medical expenses of Kshs 144,000/=; and special damages of Kshs 97,230/=, a total of Kshs 1,041,230/=. With the 50% deduction set aside, the appellant is entitled to the full sum so assessed. 49.For the foregoing reasons, the appeal succeeds. I make the following orders:(a)The preliminary objection is overruled.(b)The appeal is allowed.(c)The finding of the trial court apportioning liability at 50:50 is set aside, and there is substituted therefor a finding of liability at 100% against the respondent.(d)The judgment and decree of the trial court are varied accordingly, and judgment is entered for the appellant against the respondent in the full sum of Kshs 1,041,230/=, made up of general damages of Kshs 800,000/=, future medical expenses of Kshs 144,000/=, and special damages of Kshs 97,230/=.(e)The said sum shall carry interest at court rates: as to the general damages and future medical expenses, from 17th October 2024, being the date of the trial court's judgment; and as to the special damages, from the date of filing the suit; in each case until payment in full.(f)The appellant shall have the costs of this appeal and the costs of the suit in the trial court.It is so ordered. DATED, SIGNED AND PUBLISHED ON 7 AUGUST 2026NGAAH JAIRUSJUDGE