By BOB WASWANI
April 27, 2026| A businessman who supplied firewood worth more than half a million shillings to a girls’ secondary school has lost his legal battle to recover the money, after the High Court ruled that the entire transaction was illegal from the start.
Wildon Omoto, trading as Ekavi Ventures, had delivered 96 stacks of eucalyptus firewood to Nyakwaka Girls Secondary School (Mumias) between January 2022 and March 2023. The total bill came to Kshs 576,000. The school paid him Kshs 50,000, then stopped. The remaining Kshs 526,000 never materialised.
Omoto first took his case to the Small Claims Court in Kakamega, where adjudicator Caroline Cheruiyot dismissed it. He then appealed to the High Court, hoping for a different outcome.
On Tuesday, Justice Stephen Mbungi handed down a firm verdict: the appeal lacked merit, the earlier dismissal stood, and each party would bear its own costs.
The trouble, the judge explained, was not whether Omoto had actually delivered the firewood. The court accepted that he probably had. The problem was that a public school cannot simply phone a supplier and order goods, no matter how urgently the kitchen needs fuel.
Nyakwaka Girls is a public secondary school, funded by taxpayers and managed by a Board of Management under the Basic Education Act. That makes it a public entity, bound by the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act (PPADA) of 2015. The law is strict: before any goods are bought, there must be tendering, quotations, approval from the accounting officer, and minutes from the procurement committee.
None of that happened here.
Omoto produced a Local Purchase Order dated 28th February 2023, alongside invoices from 25th January 2022 and 2nd March 2023. Justice Mbungi noted a glaring red flag: the invoices predated the LPO. Goods were seemingly delivered before the purchase order was even issued. The court also observed that there was no evidence of any tender process, no procurement committee minutes, and no approval from the school’s accounting officer.
The law could not be clearer. Section 53(1) of the PPADA states that a public entity must ensure all procurement follows the Act. Section 74 requires that goods be procured through approved methods. The court cited a past ruling that compliance with procurement procedures is not a technicality but a substantive legal requirement.
Omoto had argued that the school’s partial payment of Kshs 50,000 proved there was a valid contract. He also pointed out that the school never bothered to enter an appearance or file a defence, which he claimed amounted to an admission of liability.
The judge was unmoved. Citing a long line of legal authorities, including the famous Mistry Amar Singh v Serwano Wofunira Kulubya case from 1963, the court held that no court can enforce an illegal contract. Illegality overrides pleadings, admissions, or even silence from the other side. A judge is duty-bound to spot it and strike it down, whether the defendant shows up or not.
“The underlying transaction was undertaken in breach of the PPADA and is therefore incapable of enforcement by a court of law,” Justice Mbungi wrote.
The ruling sends a sobering message to suppliers across Kenya: delivering goods to a public institution is not enough. If the procurement process is flawed, the contract is dead on arrival. No amount of firewood, invoices, or good intentions can revive it.
For Wildon Omoto, that means the Kshs 526,000 is gone. The firewood is burnt. And the law will not look away just because a school once paid a deposit.
The court file is now closed.