Configured Left Navigation theme leads to "doUpgrade failed" when upgrading Confluence 2.2.x to Confluence 2.8

Upgrade task failed when trying to upgrade from Confluence version 2.2.9 to Confluence version 2.8:

2008-05-08 16:57:17,109 INFO [main] [atlassian.confluence.upgrade.MoveBandanaConfigsToDatabaseUpgradeTask] doUpgrade Starting Bandana configuration migration
2008-05-08 16:57:17,296 ERROR [main] [com.atlassian.upgrade.AbstractUpgradeManager] doUpgrade Upgrade failed: com.atlassian.confluence.extra.leftnavigation.LeftNavSettings : com.atlassian.confluence.extra.leftnavigation.LeftNavSettings

Accessing Confluence via browser leads to an error page as shown in screenshot, error.jpg.

It occurs when one of the space in Confluence instance 2.2.9 is using the Left Navigation theme and the theme has been configured via the "Configure theme" session.

A workaround would be to perform an incremental upgrade. For example, first upgrade the Confluence instance from version 2.2.9 to 2.7.x. Confirm the upgrade process is successful and later perform an upgrade again from version 2.7.x to version 2.8.0.