The World Bank Group has barred Mauritius-based PricewaterhouseCoopers Associates Africa Ltd., along with PricewaterhouseCoopers Limited Kenya and PricewaterhouseCoopers Rwanda Limited, from its projects for 21 months, with the possibility of early reinstatement if certain conditions are met. The action follows findings of misconduct tied to a major cross-border electricity project linking Ethiopia and Kenya.
The sanctions relate to the Eastern Electricity Highway Project, which forms part of a wider regional effort to strengthen power integration across East Africa. The project is intended to enable Ethiopia to export surplus electricity to Kenya, while helping to lower energy costs across the region.
The move also comes against the backdrop of PwC’s history of regulatory scrutiny in different parts of the world, where it has faced penalties ranging from fines and reprimands to temporary bans and suspensions—making the latest sanction in Africa broadly in line with previous disciplinary actions.
According to the World Bank, the issues arose during the selection and execution of the Fixed Asset Inventory and Revaluation contract for the Ethiopian Electric Utility. It found that PwC Associates misrepresented the availability, qualifications, and employment status of key experts, and did not fully disclose all subconsultants involved in the project.
World Bank Bans 3 PwC African Subsidiaries for 21 Months
“The debarment makes PwC Associates, PwC Kenya, PwC Rwanda, and any affiliates they control ineligible to participate in Bank Group-financed projects and operations. It is part of a settlement agreement under which the three companies admit culpability for sanctionable practices.” the report added.
One of the entities provided misleading details on the expertise and availability of key personnel and did not release the full subcontracting arrangements, an action that didn’t meet World Bank’s integrity standards.
As part of a negotiated settlement, the companies acknowledged their role in the misconduct and agreed to corrective measures. These include internal disciplinary steps, compliance reforms, staff training, and cooperation with ongoing oversight processes. The reduced length of the ban reflects these remedial efforts.
On the morning of October 1, 2024, a day that will be remembered in Kenyan political history for the parliamentary theatre that stripped Rigathi Gachagua of the deputy presidency, a very different transaction was being concluded in the city’s commercial corridors. Officials of a company called Ultra Eureka Limited were finalising paperwork to hand over Sh45 million, a ten per cent deposit, to Garam Investments Auctioneers.
The object of their interest: a 6.8-acre leasehold in Karen, one of Nairobi’s most coveted postcodes, upon which former Cabinet Secretary Raphael Tuju had built a luxury commercial and wellness complex worth, by his own account, no less than Sh3.5 billion.
The full purchase price was Sh450 million.
By December 2024, Ultra Eureka Limited had cleared the Sh405 million balance.
By February 2025, it was registered as the new proprietor of a 99-year leasehold over land that hosts the Entim Sidai Wellness Sanctuary, Tamarind Karen and Dari Business Park. The buyer had acquired a trophy asset for less than thirteen cents on the shilling.
Ultra Eureka Limited is the sole property of Jackson Kiplimo Chebett, the dominant shareholder and board chairman of Stabex International Limited, one of Kenya’s fastest-rising petroleum marketing companies and a firm whose name has circulated for years in whispered conversations about the business interests of Kenya’s political class.
The Stabex-Ruto Shadow
Stabex International Limited was incorporated in 2009 and has since grown into a petroleum colossus with over 150 retail stations across Kenya and Uganda, twelve storage depots and annual sales volumes exceeding 300 million litres of fuel.
In the final quarter of 2025, the company commanded a 4.9 per cent market share in Kenya’s downstream petroleum sector, making it the fourth largest player in the industry behind Vivo Energy, Rubis and TotalEnergies.
In a sector long dominated by multinationals, Stabex’s ascent has been remarkable by any measure.
Registered ownership of Stabex places Jackson Kiplimo Chebett as the majority shareholder with 925,000 of the company’s one million ordinary shares. Abraham Kipkoech Korir, the director of projects and business development, holds 50,000 shares.
Stabex Group Chairman Jackson Kiplimo Chebett
The share register is thin, but the company’s trajectory is anything but: it has in recent years displaced established giants, won government-linked fuel supply contracts and expanded aggressively into landlocked markets in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Since at least 2022, public discourse in Kenya has linked Stabex to President William Ruto, with allegations circulating across social media platforms and investigative blogs that the company operates as a proxy vehicle for presidential business interests.
The allegations first gained traction through posts by political blogger Robert Alai and were amplified by journalist Saddique Shaban, who specifically linked Stabex to a multimillion-dollar petroleum supply contract with the Kenya Defence Forces, characterising the company as a Ruto proxy operation.
The company has never publicly addressed the claims, and no formal legal proceedings have been brought to challenge the allegations. Company records do not show President Ruto or any member of his immediate family as a shareholder.
What is documented is the pattern of access.
In August 2023, Chebett held a meeting with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni at which the latter personally committed to facilitating Stabex’s operations in Uganda by cutting through bureaucratic red tape.
That is not the kind of introduction a petroleum trader secures through ordinary commercial channels. It is the kind of introduction that flows from political architecture.
Chebett’s board at Stabex includes former Kenya Civil Aviation Authority Director Joseph Kiptoo Chebungei, a figure from the corridors of state.
Chebett is also the sole director and ultimate beneficial owner of Ultra Eureka Farm Limited, incorporated in 2002, which in turn wholly owns Ultra Eureka Limited, incorporated in 2018 and nominally classified as an agronomy and farming inputs enterprise.
It was this agronomy vehicle, carrying Chebett’s full chain of beneficial ownership, that walked into the Karen auction on the day of Gachagua’s impeachment and paid cash for Tuju’s life’s work.
The Debt That Swallowed a Dream
The origins of Tuju’s dispossession lie in a loan agreement signed a decade ago. In April 2015, Tuju’s company Dari Limited entered into a facility agreement with the East African Development Bank for a sum of nine point three million United States dollars, equivalent at the time to approximately Sh1.2 billion, though the figure has since ballooned with interest and penalties to over Sh4.5 billion in total claimed by EADB.
The purpose was to develop a thirty-room luxury retirement facility on the Karen land that Tuju had acquired in 2010 alongside the African Wildlife Foundation as co-tenant and over which he became the sole registered owner in December 2014.
Tuju maintains he was betrayed by the lender.
His case, aired across multiple courts on two continents, is that EADB failed to disburse the full loan amount, withholding what he says was Sh294 million in additional funding he had been promised, thereby frustrating the entire development model on which his repayment plan depended.
EADB has consistently denied this characterisation. In 2019, the High Court of Justice in England and Wales entered judgment against Tuju and ordered repayment of the debt. Kenyan courts recognised that foreign judgment in 2020.
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The Court of Appeal upheld the decision in 2023. Each time Tuju sought to arrest the momentum of enforcement, the courts turned him away.
By the time EADB instructed Garam Investments Auctioneers to proceed with the sale in October 2024, Tuju had exhausted most of his options.
The Supreme Court had in 2023 dismissed his appeal, and an extraordinary episode unfolded at the apex bench when all five judges on the panel recused themselves after Tuju lodged a complaint with the Judicial Service Commission accusing them of predetermination.
The recusal was dramatic but ultimately unhelpful to Tuju: the Supreme Court simultaneously declined to suspend the Court of Appeal decision, leaving EADB with a clear runway to enforcement.
The Registrar Who Looked Away
The sale itself, however contentious, might have been legally unremarkable had it not been for what happened at Ardhi House in the weeks that followed. Court records and affidavits filed in subsequent proceedings reveal a remarkable sequence: a valid court order barring the transfer of the Karen property was physically presented to the Ministry of Lands for registration, and an advocate instructed to log the injunction was told by officials that the order was not registrable because it contained no explicit instruction directed to the Chief Land Registrar.
The property was transferred to Ultra Eureka Limited on February 18, 2025, ten days after the court order had been extended for a third time on February 6, 2025.
The Chief Land Registrar at the time was David Nyambasa Nyandoro, a figure already enmeshed in his own legal battle for survival.
The Employment and Labour Relations Court had in May 2024 revoked his appointment and directed Lands Cabinet Secretary Alice Wahome and Principal Secretary Nixon Korir to replace him with Peter Mburu Ng’ang’a.
Nyandoro and the Attorney General appealed and secured a stay order in July 2024, allowing him to continue in office pending the appeal. It was therefore a man whose tenure was itself judicially contested who presided over the registration of a transfer that critics say was executed in contempt of court.
Busia Senator Okiya Omtatah, who is a respondent in the Nyandoro appeal, has since moved to introduce fresh evidence at the Court of Appeal specifically linking Nyandoro’s conduct in the Tuju transfer to his fitness for office.
Omtatah argues that Nyandoro, as the only officer in Kenya empowered to register property transfers, had a clear statutory duty under Section 68 of the Land Registration Act to register the court order inhibiting dealings with the parcel, once it was formally presented. To ignore it, he contends, was not a clerical oversight but deliberate contempt.
“That despite being fully aware of the said orders, the appellant knowingly, wilfully and deliberately disobeyed them and on or about 18th February 2025, proceeded to register an unlawful transfer of the said property in favour of Ultra Eureka, in contempt of the orders,” Omtatah states in his court papers, adding that Nyandoro also caused the title to be converted from L.R. No. 1055/165 to a new title, Nairobi Block 47/1399, under which Ultra Eureka Limited is registered as proprietor for a 99-year term.
Dawn Raids and Locked Gates
For nearly a year after the October 2024 auction, Tuju and his tenants continued to occupy the Dari Business Park and its associated premises. The legal machinery was still grinding, and successive injunction applications kept enforcement tentatively at bay. That equilibrium collapsed violently in the early hours of March 14, 2026.
Photographs and video footage broadcast nationally showed Tuju outside his own property at three in the morning as heavily armed police officers sealed off Dari Business Park along Ngong Road in Karen. The operation, executed under darkness with a show of state force that left observers unsettled, locked out Tuju and his associates and handed physical possession to Ultra Eureka Limited’s new security deployment.
Tuju spoke to journalists by phone, conveying a message to his children that became one of the most striking images of his unravelling ordeal.
Chebett’s version of events, filed in a replying affidavit before the High Court, records that prior to the dawn operation, the situation had already turned volatile. He claims that a group of more than fifty men forced their way onto the premises after the High Court lifted interim injunction orders, physically assaulting the security guards Ultra Eureka had deployed and injuring several of them before police were called to restore order. Tuju’s camp disputes aspects of this account.
The courts have now produced a fresh restraining order, this time freezing further transfer or assignment of the title pending the determination of Tuju’s application before the High Court.
That hearing is scheduled for April 7, 2026. Tuju has also lodged a parallel appeal at the Court of Appeal, meaning the battle for the Karen properties is far from concluded. In the meantime, Ultra Eureka Limited has charged the same title to Kenya Commercial Bank for a two point five million dollar loan facility, a move Tuju’s lawyers characterise as compounding the alleged contempt by encumbering land that remains under judicial dispute.
The Question That Will Not Go Away
The case against the Stabex-Ruto connection rests on inference, on the architecture of proximity. There is no documentary evidence placing President Ruto within the ownership chain of either Stabex International or Ultra Eureka Limited.
The Registrar of Companies records are unambiguous: Chebett controls both entities absolutely. What cannot be dismissed so easily is the political environment in which these transactions occur.
Chebett is a Kalenjin businessman from the Rift Valley, operating in a sector that is acutely sensitive to government goodwill, where fuel import licences, open tender system allocations and infrastructure access depend fundamentally on the disposition of the executive.
Stabex’s rise from incorporated startup in 2009 to fourth-largest petroleum retailer in Kenya by late 2025 is a remarkable commercial achievement that has coincided precisely with the arc of Ruto’s political ascendancy, from deputy president to president.
The company’s aviation fuel launch at JKIA in October 2024, attended by Energy Cabinet Secretary Opiyo Wandayi and Kenya Airports Authority chairman Caleb Kositany, was a statement of institutional embrace.
Tuju, for his part, is not simply a businessman who defaulted on a bank loan.
He is a senior political figure of the Raila Odinga era, a Luo politician who served as Cabinet Secretary under the Jubilee administration and who has since drifted to the opposition periphery.
The optics of a man from that political alignment losing a Sh3.5 billion property for Sh450 million to a businessman linked publicly to the presidency, through a process in which the Chief Land Registrar allegedly defied a court order, are not ones that any government eager to project rule of law should be comfortable inhabiting.
The Judiciary, through its communications office, has been unusually active in issuing public statements defending the chain of judicial decisions that culminated in Tuju’s eviction.
It has pointed to the 2019 London judgment, the 2020 Kenyan recognition of that judgment, the 2023 Court of Appeal upholding and the Supreme Court’s refusal of interim relief as an unbroken line of lawful process.
Justice Josephine Mongare, whose ruling of March 9, 2026 struck out Tuju’s latest suit as an abuse of process, found the case to be res judicata and a vexatious attempt to re-litigate a debt whose validity had been exhaustively determined. Her language was unsparing.
The legal analysis may be coherent.
The political symbolism is not so easily dissolved.
The Tuju affair is the story of a major transaction executed on the most politically charged day of Kenya’s recent history, by a company controlled by a man whose larger corporate vehicle has been publicly, if unproven, linked to the president.
It involves a land registrar who held office in defiance of a court order and who is alleged to have registered a property transfer in contempt of a judicial injunction.
And it ends, at least provisionally, with armed police locking a former Cabinet Secretary out of his own premises at three in the morning.
Those are not the hallmarks of an ordinary commercial debt recovery. They are the hallmarks of power.
Chebett did not respond to requests for comment beyond the affidavit filed in the High Court. Stabex International Limited did not issue a public statement on the Karen acquisition. The Office of the President declined to comment on the company’s alleged links to President Ruto.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Ali Larijani, a top Iranian security official and a conservative force within Iran’s theocracy, was killed in an Israeli strike, Iranian authorities confirmed Tuesday. He was 67.
Larijani was widely believed to be running the country following the killing of its supreme leader in U.S. and Israeli strikes late last month that sparked a widening war. Israel said earlier Tuesday that it had killed Larijani, but it was several hours before Iran confirmed his death.
He had been appointed to advise Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on strategy in nuclear talks with the Trump administration and traveled to Oman to meet with mediators just two weeks before the war began. Like other top Iranian leaders, Larijani was under heavy U.S. sanctions and implicated in the violent repression of mass protests in January.
He was ineligible to become supreme leader after Khamenei’s death because he is not a Shiite cleric. But he was widely expected to serve as a top adviser, and many believed he was running the country as U.S. and Israeli strikes have driven Iran’s leadership underground. The Supreme National Security Council said his son Morteza Larijani was also killed.
A week ago, after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to attack Iran “TWENTY TIMES HARDER” if Tehran stopped oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, Larijani responded on X.
“The sacrificial nation of Iran doesn’t fear your empty threats. Even those bigger than you couldn’t eliminate Iran,” he wrote. “Be careful not to get eliminated yourself.”
Larijani was born into one of Iran’s most famous political families, which many media outlets have compared to the Kennedys in the United States. One brother, Sadeq, served as the head of Iran’s judiciary, while another, Mohammad Javad, was a senior diplomat who closely advised the late Khamenei on foreign affairs.
Over the years, Larijani issued increasingly hard-line threats. In the 1990s, he served as Iran’s culture minister, tightening censorship. He served as parliament speaker from 2008 to 2020, and most recently as head of the Supreme National Security Council.
He wrote at least six philosophy books, including three exploring the works of German philosopher Immanuel Kant.
Seven suspects linked to an alleged multi-million dollar fraud scheme involving a fake government contract have been arraigned before a Nairobi court and charged with multiple offences.
The 7 accused include Michafi Musyoki Ngumbi, Evans Simotwo, Geofrey Were Odondi, Allan Mutahi Kariuki, Purity Nieri Niamu, Muniaro Jared Masinde and Kororia Simatwa —appeared before Milimani Chief Magistrate Teresa Nyangena, where they denied all the charges.
However, their co-accused, Rose Mbuthia, failed to appear in court, prompting the magistrate to issue summons requiring her to appear before the court.
According to court documents, the eight are accused of conspiring to defraud a foreign national, Talal Yousef Yousef Zaitoun, of USD 470,750 (approximately KSh 60 million).
The prosecution alleges that between January 10 and February 25, 2026, the group falsely claimed they were in a position to secure a Kenyan government tender for the supply and delivery of 500 high-roof diesel Toyota Hiace ambulances.
The court heard that the suspects allegedly misrepresented themselves as capable of facilitating the contract purportedly from the Ministry of Interior and National Administration — claims investigators say were false.
In a separate charge co-accused Geofrey Were Odondi faces charges of obtaining money by false pretences, with prosecutors stating that he received the funds through Lianyungang Chanta International Wood Company Limited under the guise of facilitating the non-existent deal.
Odondi is also charged with acquisition of proceeds of crime after allegedly receiving USD 450,750 through an Equity Bank account registered under Damira Multiactivities, knowing or having reason to believe the funds were proceeds of crime.
Additionally, Michafi Musyoki Ngumbi faces two counts of forgery. He is accused of forging a contract agreement purportedly between the Ministry of Interior and a foreign firm, Jokara AB, for the ambulance supply, as well as a letter of notification of award to make the deal appear legitimate.
All the accused present in court denied the charges.
Magistrate Nyangena released each of the seven accused persons on a cash bail of Sh300,000 and directed that Rose Mbuthia appear before court as summoned. The case will be mentioned on a later date.
A retired teacher in Nairobi is fighting to save her home after a Sh500,000 loan she took to fund her children’s travel abroad ballooned into a Sh1.5 million debt, triggering an eviction threat and exposing what she describes as a predatory lending trap.
Lydia Wangare Mwangi, 64, says she is now at risk of losing her Kahawa Wendani property valued at more than Sh10 million after defaulting on the loan from Bashy African Credit Limited.
The property includes her family home and ten rental units built over four decades from her teaching salary.
“I wanted my children to go abroad and come back with something,” Mwangi told the media at her compound near the SDA church. “Now I am the one being chased away. At my age, where do I begin?”
Her warning is stark.
“They will eat you alive.”
Mwangi’s ordeal began about three years ago when she sought financial help to send her two children to the Middle East for work opportunities. She was referred by a friend to an agent identified as Brenda Achieng Onyango, who operated from an office in Adams Arcade in Nairobi.
According to Mwangi, the agent declined a deferred payment arrangement and instead directed her to Bashy African Credit Limited for a secured loan.
The money was disbursed. The travel plans collapsed. The agent disappeared.
Mwangi says repeated attempts to trace the agent were unsuccessful after the office was shut down and the phone numbers went off.
What remained was the loan.
Last week, representatives of the lender reportedly issued a two-week ultimatum demanding settlement of an outstanding balance now said to exceed Sh1.5 million. Failure to pay could see the lender take possession of the property.
Mwangi had used her title deed as collateral.
“I built this place room by room from my salary,” she said. “How does a loan meant to help my children become something that destroys everything?”
She is now considering selling the entire property to clear the debt and relocate to a smaller home.
“If someone can buy and settle the loan, let them come. I just want peace,” she said.
Efforts to seek intervention have yielded little. Mwangi says she reached out to a local church leader for assistance but received no tangible support.
Bashy African Credit Limited, which operates in Nairobi and offers title deed-backed loans, advertises fast processing and competitive interest rates. However, borrower complaints and court records point to a pattern of aggressive recovery practices and disputed transactions.
In one High Court matter involving the company, a lower court found that a vehicle repossession and sale linked to a loan dispute were marred by fraud and misrepresentation, declaring the transaction null and void. In another case, the High Court criticised a ruling that released a disputed vehicle to the lender, warning it undermined ongoing criminal proceedings.
The lender had not responded to queries from The Star by the time of publication.
Mwangi’s case reflects a wider crisis in Kenya’s lending sector, where complaints against digital and microfinance lenders have surged.
Data from the Competition Authority of Kenya shows the financial sector accounts for a significant share of consumer complaints, with borrowers citing high interest rates, non-disclosure of terms, and harsh recovery tactics.
Regulators have acknowledged growing concerns, including hidden charges and unilateral changes to loan terms, and say investigations are ongoing.
Legal experts warn that many borrowers fall into trouble through loosely structured agreements involving title deeds.
Under Kenyan law, an “informal charge” must meet strict requirements, including a clear written agreement indicating intent to create a security interest. However, in practice, borrowers often sign documents without fully understanding the implications.
This creates a legal grey area that lenders can exploit when enforcing recovery.
Mwangi now finds herself trapped in that system, racing against time to avoid losing everything she owns.
Her children, whose planned migration triggered the loan, have been unable to reverse the situation.
As the deadline approaches, she says her story should serve as a warning.
“It is better to live in a small house that is yours,” she said. “Do not risk everything for a loan you do not fully understand.”
The agent at the centre of the transaction remains untraceable. The lender is yet to publicly respond. And Mwangi continues to wait, hoping to salvage what remains of a lifetime’s work.
Barely a fortnight after burying Emurua Dikirr Member of Parliament Johana Ng’eno, the constituency has been plunged into a three-way succession contest, with the late legislator’s widow, Naiyanoi Ntutu, formally endorsed by the family and a majority of elders from the Kapkaon clan to carry the United Democratic Alliance ticket in the by-election now scheduled for May 14.
The endorsement, which came out of a consultative meeting held at Naiyanoi’s matrimonial home in Mogondo village on Thursday, March 12, was attended by more than 300 elders who had gathered ostensibly to offer condolences but also to deliberate on the political future of a constituency regarded as one of the most volatile stretches of the South Rift. The gathering resolved unanimously to back the 29-year-old lawyer as the successor to her husband, who had won and defended the seat across three successive general elections since the constituency’s creation in 2013.
Ng’eno, 53, died on February 28 when the Airbus H125 helicopter he was travelling in crashed and burst into flames in a forested section of Chepkiep, Mosop Sub-County in Nandi County. The aircraft had made an emergency landing due to bad weather before the pilot attempted a second takeoff, an attempt that ended catastrophically, scattering debris and metal fragments across the crash site. Ng’eno perished alongside pilot George Were, photojournalist Nick Kosgei, Kenya Forest Service ranger Amos Kipngetich Rotich, teacher Carlos Robert Keter and Narok County protocol officer Wycliff Rono.
The push for family succession gathered momentum during the burial on March 6, when the MP’s mother, Mary Temas, made an emotional appeal before a gathering that included President William Ruto and his deputy Kithure Kindiki. Standing at the graveside, she declared that the parliamentary seat would not leave her family, urging constituents to honour her son’s memory by keeping the leadership baton within his household. The statement set the tone for the endorsement that followed days later.
Naiyanoi, who married Ng’eno in August 2018 at Emurua Dikirr Secondary School when she was 22 and he was 46, had until now remained conspicuously removed from constituency affairs, her public profile limited to the quiet orbit of a legislator’s household. Her late husband had at the time been the oldest bachelor in Parliament serving his second term, with pressure from constituents and fellow leaders over the absence of a spouse something of a running commentary in local political discourse. The marriage drew prominent attention, including a photograph of the couple with ODM leader Raila Odinga taken at the wedding grounds.
In her first public political statement since her husband’s death, Naiyanoi thanked the family, clan and constituents for the responsibility placed on her shoulders and urged the voters of Emurua Dikirr to rally behind her candidature once the election date is formally announced. She called for peaceful and mature politics, invoking the spirit her husband was known for in the constituency. Family spokesman Johana Langat echoed the appeal, calling on residents to give her the opportunity to complete the remainder of the parliamentary term.
Clan elder David Ngetich framed the endorsement as a transitional arrangement rather than a long-term political settlement, arguing that at one and a half years remaining before the next general election, the broader question of future leadership could await a more deliberate community decision in 2027. The argument is one calculated to pre-empt internal resistance by presenting Naiyanoi’s candidacy as continuity rather than entrenchment.
However, the picture is not as settled as the family would wish. A dissident section of the Kapkaon clan has rallied behind Bernard Rono, a cousin of the late MP who serves as an administrator in Narok County government. Rono has maintained a deliberately low profile since his name entered circulation, a posture that political observers in the region read as tactical, allowing the family grief to exhaust itself before he makes a more assertive move toward the UDA ticket.
Complicating the succession calculus further is the return of David Keter, a businessman who twice ran against Ng’eno in previous general elections, finishing second on both occasions. Keter declared interest in the seat over the weekend, also positioning himself within the UDA fold. His entry signals that the contest will almost certainly be decided at party nominations level, with the primary expected to be fiercely contested across a constituency of 44,447 registered voters spread across the four wards of Ilkerin, Mogondo, Kapsasian and Ololmasani.
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission gazetted May 14 as the by-election date, scheduling the Emurua Dikirr poll alongside two ward by-elections in Porro Ward in Samburu County and Endo Ward in Elgeyo-Marakwet County. Under the IEBC timetable published in the Kenya Gazette on March 13, parties intending to field candidates must submit the names of nominees for party primaries by March 25, with the final list of party candidates due with the commission by April 7. Official nomination of candidates will take place on April 15 and 16, with campaigns running until May 11, 48 hours before polling day.
The commission told Parliament that the Sh59.38 million budgeted for the Emurua Dikirr contest had not been included in the Supplementary I estimates, forcing the agency to seek additional funds from the legislature. National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetang’ula had been expected to issue the vacancy writ within 90 days of the seat falling vacant, and the gazette notice confirms that the constitutional process is now firmly in motion.
For Naiyanoi, the endorsement represents a political baptism by fire. She steps into a contest shaped by the grief of an entire constituency that had known no other representative since Emurua Dikirr was carved out of the old Kilgoris seat. Ng’eno was at the very core of the constituency’s creation, having come within a whisker of winning the Kilgoris seat in the disputed 2007 elections before ethnic boundary delimitations by the Andrew Ligale commission produced a new seat tailor-made for the Kipsigis community of Trans Mara East.
The late MP had served on the Departmental Committee on Housing, Urban Planning and Public Works, which he chaired in the current parliament, and was credited with shepherding the Affordable Housing Act of 2024 through committee. He had also sat on the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee in the 12th Parliament and was admitted to the bar as an Advocate of the High Court as recently as September 2025, fulfilling a professional ambition that paralleled his legislative career. It is a legacy that his widow, also a lawyer, is now being asked to extend.
The by-election will offer the first gauge of whether sympathy votes, clan solidarity and the weight of the Ng’eno name are sufficient to carry an untested candidate into Parliament, or whether the appetite for a familiar opposition figure such as Keter or a clan insider like Rono will prove stronger in a constituency that has known spirited contestation at every electoral cycle since 2013.
The afternoon of Sunday, December 30, 2007, was supposed to be the moment Kenya demonstrated to the world that it could manage a peaceful democratic transition.
Instead, it became the hour in which a group of powerful men gathered in a State House boardroom and decided that the will of the people was an obstacle to be managed rather than a verdict to be honoured.
What follows is drawn from NTV’s landmark investigative documentary Stolen Ballot, which aired this week to convulse a country still carrying the wounds of the violence that erupted hours after that stolen declaration, as well as from contemporaneous reporting, the public admission of Royal Media Services chairman Samuel Kamau Macharia in March 2025, international election observer records, and the findings of the Kriegler Commission.
Together, they construct an account so detailed, so corroborated, and so chilling in its institutional precision that it can no longer be described as allegation. It is history.
The Room Where It Was Decided
Inside a State House boardroom, five men knew everything. President Mwai Kibaki sat among them. Flanking him were his government spokesman Alfred Mutua, the Deputy Chief of the General Staff General Julius Karangi, Head of the Public Service Francis Muthaura, and Internal Security minister John Michuki, one of the most feared political operators in the country.
Each man had a role. Each man understood the stakes. And each man understood that what was being planned carried the seed of the violence that would follow.
Former Chief of the Defence Forces Gen (Rtd) Julius Karangi.
The operation was structured, according to those who later spoke on record, with the deliberate architecture of a military mission. Information was shared on a strict need-to-know basis. Different operatives were assigned isolated tasks. No one outside the five was permitted to see the full picture.
It was General Karangi, Kenya’s most celebrated tactical commander, the man who would later mastermind the bloodless recapture of the Somali port city of Kismayu from Al-Shabaab without losing a single soldier, who gave the operation its discipline.
His presence in that room was not incidental. He was there because what was being planned required the kind of precise, compartmentalised execution he had perfected on the battlefield.
“I was told: we do not know how the day will end, but we know Kibaki must remain president.” — Nimrod Mbai, Kitui East MP, then police sergeant
Mutua has since confirmed the composition of that room himself, speaking on national television in the days after Kibaki’s death in 2022.
He described the President’s anxiety, the calls being monitored, and the mood of controlled urgency that gripped State House as the hours wore on. He did not use the word fraud. But what he described was something far more deliberate than a disputed result.
The Tallying Centre in Chaos
To understand what happened in State House, one must first understand what was happening at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre, where the Electoral Commission of Kenya was conducting the national tally. By the morning of December 30, the count had taken on a deeply suspicious character.
Former ECK commissioner Jack Tumwa told NTV that commissioners had expected results to begin arriving by 10pm on election night, December 27. They did not. The following morning, results were still trickling in at a pace that mystified officials who had run elections before.
More troublingly, some returning officers from constituencies in Nairobi itself could not be reached by telephone. Nairobi is not a remote constituency. There was no logistical excuse for the silence.
Early results showed Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement holding a commanding lead. Media houses running parallel tallies were reporting it.
The Nation Media Group had prepared a front page carrying the words “President-Elect” with Odinga’s photograph. It was never published.
Then, without explanation, the character of the count changed. Results from constituencies in the Mount Kenya region, which had been conspicuously absent, arrived in a cluster.
The numbers were startling.
ECK chairman Samuel Kivuitu himself had been overheard remarking that if the returning officers from Kiambaa had been cooking the results, they were now overcooking them, and that even if they had decided to walk to the tallying centre on foot they would already have arrived.
Commissioner Muturi Kigano later tried to characterise the remark as a tasteless joke. Commissioner Tumwa characterised it differently. “Really, there was something wrong,” he said. “We were very suspicious.”
Four commissioners issued a formal statement expressing reservations about the process. They asked for transparency. They were ignored.
Outside the hall, the government was furious with the media. Minister John Michuki convened an emergency meeting with media executives at Harambee House and accused broadcasters of inflaming tensions by reporting Odinga’s early lead from their own parallel tallies.
KBC editor-in-chief Waithaka Waihenya was present. He described Michuki as agitated.
The one person he recalled as calm was Muthaura, who spoke quietly. The contrast between the two men was telling. Muthaura, as events would show, already knew exactly how the situation was going to resolve.
The Phone Call to Cut the Power
By Sunday afternoon, the pace of events inside KICC had become unmanageable. The opposition was on the stage. William Ruto, then the Eldoret North MP, was pressing Kivuitu at close quarters, demanding verification of constituency tallies that did not match the forms signed by ODM agents.
Martha Karua and the late Mutula Kilonzo were pressing from the Kibaki side. GSU officers had been deployed to the floor. Someone passed word that one of the politicians present was armed with a grenade.
The government was watching and growing increasingly alarmed. The fear, Mutua later explained, was specific and legal. If Kibaki was declared the winner by the commission, Raila’s team would immediately seek a court injunction to block the swearing-in. The declaration had to happen, and it had to happen fast, and it had to happen under conditions where no judge could intervene in time.
Mutua picked up the phone and called Philip Kisia, the managing director of KICC. The instruction was direct: cut the power to the tallying hall. Kisia declined.
A second call came. This time, Mutua placed a cabinet minister on the line. Kisia later confirmed that the minister read out the names of officials sitting with the President at State House.
The message was unmistakable: this was a direct order from the highest level of government.
Kisia walked to the power room with a technician named Ombati. The rest of the staff had gone home. He threw the switch himself.
“I told him, because I know how cameras work, to turn off the lights at KICC.” — Alfred Mutua, then Government Spokesman
The vast hall of the KICC plunged into darkness. Opposition politicians who had been monitoring the tally table were suddenly disoriented. In the confusion, the next phase of the plan moved.
The Secret Recording
Before the blackout, Kivuitu had been under sustained pressure from multiple directions. He had been refusing to take Mutua’s calls. Kisia eventually persuaded him to speak with the government spokesman, and the two men spoke in Kamba for approximately ten minutes. No one present understood what was said. When the call ended, Kivuitu asked Kisia for a desk.
Former Election Commission Chairman Samuel Kivuitu (right) addressing a press conference at KICC just before the announcement of the results of the disputed 2007 General Elections.
He was then walked to a separate room within KICC where a KBC camera crew was waiting. The recording was done there, away from the chaotic hall, away from the rival politicians, in a controlled environment that the government had arranged. Kisia took a deliberate decision that only the national broadcaster would record the moment.
Waihenya, receiving orders simultaneously from Mutua, Muthaura, Michuki, and a senior military officer, had already dispatched an Outside Broadcast van to State House before the declaration had even been made. He had not been told the result. He did not need to be.
Kivuitu’s voice on that tape declared Mwai Kibaki the winner of the 2007 presidential election. The tape was then placed inside a sock worn by a member of the KBC team, as Waihenya had instructed, and taken out of the building.
The opposition realised something was happening. They tried to break down the door of the room where the recording had been made. They were too late.
The Extraction
Police Sergeant Nimrod Mbai had been placed on standby since that afternoon. He had been called in from his day off by Mutua, who had brought him to the third floor of KICC and briefed him on a mission involving Kivuitu. His task was to ensure the ECK chairman could be evacuated safely if violence broke out inside the tallying centre.
Mbai was not selected at random. He was one of a small number of officers with a special access card that allowed movement through every section of the building.
He had been taken to a CID shooting range earlier that afternoon where his weapon, a Ceska pistol, was test-fired. Officers then offered him a second firearm in case the first jammed.
He declined the second gun. He had been told, in terms he found unmistakable, that what was about to happen was expected to be dangerous.
The two men, Mbai and Kivuitu, had met earlier and agreed on a coded password. When it was spoken, Kivuitu would know it was time to move.
The moment the lights went out, Mbai stepped forward, tapped Kivuitu on the shoulder, and said the word. He took a green file from the table, which he was told contained the electoral results.
The two men left through a side exit and descended to the basement parking. Kivuitu was elderly and asked to be taken slowly.
The walk that Mbai, an athlete, could have completed in one minute took four. His own description of what was running through his mind in those four minutes belongs to the historical record of what Kenya did to itself that evening: “This was war in my mind.”
Outside KICC, a vehicle was waiting. Alfred Mutua was driving. The car was immediately flanked by a security convoy. It moved through Nairobi toward State House at speed. At the gate, officers were already waiting.
Five Minutes to Air
Former Kenya Broadcasting Corporation Editor-in-Chief Waithaka Waihenya.
Back at KBC’s studios, Waihenya was surrounded by GSU officers. He could not move to the toilet without an armed escort. One of the calls he received that evening threatened him directly. He was told the situation was bigger than him and that he had better announce the results.
He refused to be pressured, but he had the tape, and he had his orders, and within five minutes of returning to the studio, Kivuitu’s pre-recorded declaration was broadcast on the national broadcaster.
Waihenya later revealed that as the broadcast went live, he could hear the President’s voice on a speakerphone that had not been switched off. Kibaki said, in Swahili, that he wanted to see it on television. He saw it.
Minutes later, at State House, Mutua walked into the room and told the President what had happened. “Kibaki hugged me,” Mutua said. “It was the first time he hugged me.” Muthaura and Michuki embraced. The relief was physical. Outside the compound, Kenya was beginning to burn.
The Macharia Confession
The NTV documentary did not emerge in a vacuum. Its most devastating corroboration came not from the documentary itself but from a speech delivered a year before it aired, at a funeral in Machakos on March 15, 2025.
Royal Media Services chairman Samuel Kamau Macharia stood up to honour a dead friend, retired Colonel James Gitahi, and fulfilled a pact they had made: whichever of them died first, the other would tell the truth about 2007.
Macharia told the mourners that his network’s parallel tallying system had given him complete data showing Odinga had won the election. His data showed a margin of 1.8 million votes in Odinga’s favour. He was then, he said, taken from his home at night. All the returning officers from the Mount Kenya region were rounded up.
Their official Forms 16A were taken. Macharia was transported to his own office, where he found men whose names he chose not to give. Together, they changed the figures. Kibaki won.
The Macharia statement was reported widely and dismissed by some as the grieving embellishments of an elderly political partisan. In light of the NTV documentary and the accounts of Mbai, Kisia, Waihenya, and the ECK commissioners, it is considerably harder to make that dismissal.
“Our data was showing Raila had won with 1.8 million votes. I was picked from my house at night… we changed all those figures, and Kibaki won.” — S.K. Macharia, RMS Chairman, March 2025
What the International Record Shows
Kenya did not conduct this operation unobserved. The European Union’s chief election observer, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, declared the elections flawed, finding that the ECK had failed to establish the credibility of the tallying process to the satisfaction of all parties.
The EU noted specific constituencies where results read out in the presence of their observers did not match the tallies later announced by the commission. In the Molo constituency, the discrepancy was flagged explicitly.
The Carter Center raised similar concerns. A diplomatic cable from the United States Embassy in Nairobi, declassified and published in 2012, showed that Ambassador Michael Ranneberger assessed the situation in five different scenarios and concluded that in all of them the margin of victory for either side was slim and ultimately unknowable.
His cable did note evidence of rigging on both sides, a qualification that has been cited by Kibaki’s defenders but which does not in any way address the specific sequence of institutional fraud described by the insiders who have now spoken.
ECK chairman Kivuitu himself, speaking on January 2, 2008, told journalists outside his Nairobi home that he did not know whether Kibaki had won the election. He said he had been pressured by the PNU to announce the results. He said he had contemplated resignation.
He did not resign. He went to a room in KICC, he spoke in Kamba for ten minutes with Mutua, he asked for a desk, and he read a result into a KBC camera.
The Kriegler Commission, established under the terms of the Kofi Annan-brokered peace deal, found that electoral fraud had been rampant and had begun at the polling station level.
Its central and devastating conclusion was that the errors and manipulations in the tallying process were so great and so widespread that it was impossible to reconstruct from the formal record who had actually won.
That conclusion has often been cited as grounds for ambiguity. It is more accurately read as a legal description of evidence destruction.
The Legal Vacuum and the Price Paid
The declaration triggered violence within minutes. Across Nairobi and in the Rift Valley, the Nyanza region, and Mombasa, communities that had voted for Odinga in overwhelming numbers took to the streets. Police opened fire with live ammunition.
In Eldoret, a church sheltering Kikuyu families was set alight. More than 1,000 Kenyans died. Six hundred thousand were displaced. The country did not recover its institutional confidence for years and arguably has not recovered it fully even now.
Kofi Annan brokered a power-sharing deal that installed Odinga as Prime Minister under a Grand Coalition Government. Kenya got a new constitution in 2010. The ECK was dissolved. But no one was charged with the theft of the election.
No one was prosecuted for the midnight roundup of returning officers in the Mount Kenya region.
No one answered in court for the switching of the KICC power supply, the pre-arranged recording, the pre-positioned OB van at State House, the password-activated extraction of Kivuitu through a darkened building by an armed officer who had been told this was war.
Commissioner Tumwa has since said plainly that he believes Odinga was denied the presidency by manipulation. He said, with the weight of having been in that hall, that he thinks Raila Odinga would have won.
A Reckoning Eighteen Years Late
What is remarkable about the week in which the NTV documentary Stolen Ballot has aired is not that new facts have emerged. Most of these facts have been in circulation in fragments for years. What is remarkable is that the men who were present have now spoken with a directness that the passage of time and the deaths of Kibaki and Kivuitu have made possible. Mutua confirmed the core of the operation on national television years ago.
Mbai, now a member of parliament, has given chapter-and-verse testimony. Kisia has confirmed he threw the switch. Waihenya has described the sock, the GSU escort, the speakerphone on which he heard the President’s voice. Macharia has described the night abduction and the altered forms.
Against this record, Commissioner Kigano’s insistence that the Electoral Commission simply announced whatever the returning officers delivered is not a defence. It is a description of the mechanism by which the fraud was laundered through an institution designed to provide it with legal cover.
What the country is owed is not merely acknowledgement but a formal reckoning: a truth process with legal authority, the ability to compel testimony, and the mandate to establish an official record. Kenya paid for the absence of such a process in blood.
It continues to pay for it in the corrosive distrust that attaches to every election result, every commission, every announcement from a podium about the people’s choice.
The lights at KICC went out at Mutua’s instruction. They have not fully come back on since.
The Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) has slapped Guaranty Trust Bank Kenya with a Sh33.18 million penalty after investigators established that the lender subjected ASL Limited, a long-standing corporate borrower, to false representations and unconscionable conduct during the troubled renewal of critical business facilities — conduct that ultimately forced the manufacturer to flee to a rival bank after clearing a staggering Sh417.85 million in overdraft balances under duress.
The ruling, dated January 29, 2026, and made public on February 24, is one of the most consequential consumer protection decisions in Kenya’s banking sector in recent memory.
CAK set the penalty at exactly two percent of GT Bank’s gross annual turnover for 2023 — a figure the regulator calculated at Sh33,180,000 — well below the ten percent statutory ceiling, a margin that signals the authority chose punishment over ruin, even as it described the bank’s behaviour in terms that left little room for charitable interpretation.
Beyond the headline fine, the regulator ordered GT Bank to refund ASL Sh13,211,285 within 30 days, a sum representing default interest and related charges the authority found were applied retroactively and without the notice the law demands.
GT Bank has since appealed the ruling to the Competition Tribunal, and the matter is now sub judice. The bank insists its conduct was fully consistent with its contractual obligations and applicable banking law, and has pledged to let the appellate process run its course before commenting further.
Two Decades of Loyalty, Then a Default Notice
ASL Limited is not a fly-by-night operation. The diversified manufacturer and distributor, which serves Kenya’s construction, electrical and industrial sectors, had banked with GT Bank since 2001 — a relationship stretching across more than two decades. In July 2021, the company secured a suite of credit facilities from the lender: overdrafts, letters of credit, asset financing, guarantees and working capital support.
These were backed by company assets and the personal guarantees of ASL’s directors, indicating the depth of commitment on both sides.
The facilities were due to expire in May 2022. ASL did the responsible thing: it applied for renewal as early as January 2022, well within the required timeline.
What followed, according to CAK’s findings, was not a straightforward renewal negotiation but a prolonged exercise in institutional ambiguity that left ASL in a state of suspended financial animation for the better part of eighteen months.
Despite months of back-and-forth engagement, GT Bank failed to communicate a clear position on the renewal. It was not until June 2023 — more than a year after the expiry date — that the bank offered a three-month extension. The offer came with strings: additional security requirements and reduced facility limits. ASL accepted.
“The bank leveraged its substantially higher negotiating power as a commercial lender to treat ASL unfairly by unilaterally recalling the facilities and backdating charges and fees.” — Competition Authority of Kenya
But the concessions did not end there. GT Bank subsequently issued a revised offer that cut the limits further still. That was the moment ASL began exploring a transfer of its facilities to I&M Bank. In the middle of those transition discussions — with the ink barely dry on preliminary arrangements — the company received a formal default notice on October 31, 2023, accompanied by a demand for Sh13.2 million in default interest that ASL said had been calculated back to August 2023, while the renewal process was still ostensibly ongoing.
To clear the path for the I&M Bank takeover and protect the continuity of its operations, ASL had little choice but to pay. It cleared outstanding overdrafts totalling Sh417,848,415 and a further USD 197,802.
GT Bank subsequently offered to refund Sh2.8 million as a goodwill gesture — a figure ASL rejected as wholly inadequate and lodged a formal complaint with CAK on October 5, 2024.
A Regulator Reads Between the Lines
The Competition Authority’s sixteen-month investigation parsed the facts with the rigour of a court of law.
Investigators found that GT Bank had violated Section 55(a)(ii) of the Competition Act on false or misleading representations and Section 57(1) on unconscionable conduct in business transactions — two distinct legal pillars that together frame a picture of a lender that knowingly exploited a client’s vulnerability.
On the question of misrepresentation, the authority found that the bank continued charging fees for facilities it had not formally approved, misled ASL on the status and availability of its banking services, and applied default interest retroactively without prior notice — thereby misrepresenting the state of ASL’s account to the company’s profound financial detriment.
Crucially, CAK also found that GT Bank dressed up materially altered facility offers as renewals, a characterisation that obscured from ASL the true nature and continuity of what was being offered.
The bank also made a partial refund without proper admission or transparency, a move the regulator said could confuse or mislead customers about the accuracy of service charges.
The unconscionable conduct finding cuts deeper still. CAK was unsparing in its assessment of the power dynamics at play.
As a commercial lender with substantial financial resources, GT Bank held vastly superior bargaining power relative to ASL.
The regulator found the bank exploited that asymmetry in three ways: it unilaterally reduced facility limits while demanding additional security; it recalled facilities during active negotiations rather than after a breakdown; and it backdated charges at a moment calculated to maximise pressure on the borrower.
GT Bank’s defence — that ASL’s failure to execute a July 2023 offer triggered legitimate contractual default provisions and that the interest was not backdated — was rejected.
A Pan-African Bank Under Scrutiny
The ruling falls on a lender that is both a regional heavyweight and a relative niche player within Kenya’s competitive banking landscape.
GT Bank Kenya is a subsidiary of Guaranty Trust Holding Company (GTCO), the Lagos-headquartered financial conglomerate that owns one of Nigeria’s most valuable banking franchises, listed on both the Nigerian Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange. GTCO entered Kenya in 2013 through a US$100 million acquisition of the Fina Bank Group, rebranding the network the following year.
As of December 2022, GT Bank Kenya held total assets of Sh54.23 billion and reported a profit of Sh753.29 million — solid numbers that make the Sh33 million penalty sting in symbolic rather than financial terms.
The bank is led in East Africa by Managing Director Jubril Adeniji, a veteran Nigerian banker who previously established GT Bank’s Tanzania franchise before being posted to Nairobi in July 2022.
The institution markets itself on eight core principles branded as the Orange Rules, promising excellence, integrity and a culture in which the customer is king. That brand promise now sits in uncomfortable tension with a regulatory finding that the bank’s most senior conduct toward one customer was neither fair nor transparent.
Why This Ruling Matters
For Kenya’s banking sector, the CAK decision carries implications that extend well beyond ASL Limited and Guaranty Trust Bank.
The ruling arrives at a moment when regulators across East Africa are sharpening their scrutiny of how financial institutions behave during credit renewal negotiations — a phase in the lending cycle where the power imbalance between bank and borrower is at its most acute.
Borrowers whose facilities are under review often cannot simply walk away; their operations, payroll and supplier relationships depend on the continuation of credit lines. It is precisely this vulnerability that CAK found GT Bank exploited.
The authority was deliberate in its choice of language. It defined unconscionable conduct expansively to include situations where a business coerces a consumer into contracts they do not fully understand, withholds material information, or uses ambiguous wording to influence decisions — conduct it said applies as much in corporate lending as in consumer retail banking.
That framing matters because it signals that CAK is prepared to apply consumer protection principles to the boardroom, not only the counter.
The penalty computation is equally instructive. By pegging the fine to two percent of gross annual turnover rather than a fixed sum, CAK has established a precedent for scaling punishment to the size of the offender — a methodology familiar from competition law enforcement in Europe and which concentrates the minds of larger institutions more effectively than flat fines.
Whether the Competition Tribunal will uphold the ruling remains to be seen. GT Bank has signalled it will mount a full defence, arguing the authority’s findings do not reflect the evidence.
The matter is now sub judice and the refund order is, for the moment, in abeyance. But whatever outcome emerges from the appellate process, the CAK’s initial findings have already drawn a line in the sand: in Kenya, a bank that holds all the cards is not free to play them any way it pleases.
At 5.05 on the morning of Monday, February 16, 2026, a technical delegation from City Hall was scheduled to board a Kenya Airways flight at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, bound for Accra.
Their mission, conducted in conditions of unusual secrecy, was framed as a due diligence exercise: to inspect the facilities of Zoomlion Ghana Limited, a waste management company to which Nairobi County Government had, six days earlier, awarded a multibillion-shilling, twenty-year contract.
The chairman of the tender evaluation committee, Engineer Charles Ngugi Gathara, never made it onto that plane. He collapsed at the airport after suffering a sudden illness and was pronounced dead. His colleagues departed without him.
That a man died while preparing to perform due diligence on a deal that had already been awarded ought, under any functioning procurement regime, to have been the least of the questions raised by the City Hall-Zoomlion transaction.
It was not. The Zoomlion contract, formally designated Tender No. NCC/ENV/RFP/109/2025-2026, is now the subject of a High Court conservatory order, a damning internal technical review, a separate Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission inquiry in Mombasa, and a chorus of civil society outrage that has drawn comparisons to Ghana’s own long experience of being looted by the very company Nairobi has now embraced.
Investigations by Kenya Insights, drawing on court filings, procurement documents, internal government communications, international debarment records and multiple sources within City Hall and the National Treasury, reveal a procurement so fundamentally compromised that it calls into question not merely the contract itself but the integrity of every institution that permitted it to proceed.
THE DEAL IN PLAIN TERMS
The contract grants Zoomlion Ghana Limited exclusive rights to design, construct, operate, maintain and eventually transfer an integrated solid waste management system for Nairobi City County.
The scope encompasses waste collection and haulage across the capital, control of the 76-acre Dandora dumpsite, sorting, recycling and disposal infrastructure, and the construction of a waste-to-energy facility that the national government has projected could generate electricity and produce fertiliser by 2027.
The tenure is twenty years, a period that will outlast at least three gubernatorial terms and bind administrations not yet elected to a contract whose full financial terms have not been made public.
The notification of award was issued in United States dollars, an irregularity that raised immediate concern among Treasury officials who reviewed the agreement.
No dedicated funding mechanism, no escrow arrangement, no defined management fee schedule, and no guaranteed minimum waste supply commitment appear in the contract as reviewed by City Hall’s own technical team.
That team characterised the document as providing Zoomlion with what amounted to a blank cheque drawn on the public of Nairobi.
“Several commercial and financial safeguards require strengthening. The absence of provisions addressing ISPO arrangements, escrow mechanisms, clearly defined management fee schedules, guaranteed minimum waste supply and dedicated funding sources may expose the project to operational and financial risks.” — City Hall Technical Review
Zoomlion Waste Services Limited, the Kenyan vehicle for the deal, was incorporated on August 23, 2025 with Zoomlion Ghana Limited listed as the sole shareholder and two Ghanaian nationals, Said Haidar and Joseph Kwame Siaw Agyepong, listed as directors.
A single Kenyan, Mombasa lawyer Heeral Vishal Soni, appears as a director without shares.
The incorporation of the local entity preceded the advertising of the tender by nearly four months, a sequence that procurement specialists say is consistent with a tender designed around a pre-selected beneficiary.
THE SOLE BIDDER PROBLEM
The tender was advertised on December 18, 2025, on the City Hall website and the Public Procurement Information Portal. Bids closed and were opened on January 8, 2026. Zoomlion Ghana Limited was the only entity to submit a response.
In a project of this scale, complexity and duration, involving the primary waste infrastructure of a capital city of more than six million people, a single bid is not a market outcome.
It is an administrative outcome: the product of deliberate choices about how a tender is structured, priced, timed and classified.
A senior official in the National Treasury reviewed the tender documents and told Kenya Insights that the procurement was misconceived from inception.
The project, by virtue of its financing, construction and long-term operational components, falls squarely within the Public Private Partnership Act 2021 and should have been processed through the PPP Directorate under the National Treasury.
Instead, it was run under the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act 2015, a choice that stripped it of the safeguards that apply to major infrastructure concessions.
The minimum advertising period for an open international tender is 21 days; without international classification the period can be compressed in ways that effectively exclude foreign competitors who might otherwise have entered the field.
The tender document contains a clause stating that the process is open to both local and international bidders.
However, the document bears none of the required classification initials that legally designate a tender as either Open National Tender or Open International Tender.
In the absence of those designations, Kenyan companies were nominally eligible while the structural conditions of the tender ensured that only a firm already positioned and incorporated in Kenya before the advertisement could realistically respond within the window available.
Zoomlion Waste Services Limited had been in existence for exactly that purpose since August.
A HISTORY OF BRIBERY, OVERBILLING AND SCANDAL
The company at the centre of this arrangement is not a newcomer to controversy. Zoomlion Ghana Limited and two subsidiaries, Accra Compost Plant and Zoom Alliance, were formally debarred by the World Bank in 2013 after an investigation found that the company had paid bribes to facilitate contract execution and invoice processing on the World Bank-financed Emergency Monrovia Urban Sanitation Project in Liberia.
The debarment barred Zoomlion and its affiliates from bidding on any World Bank-funded contracts worldwide.
The sanction remained in force until 2015, when the company entered into a Negotiated Resolution Agreement with the Bank, acknowledged the misconduct and agreed to strengthen compliance with integrity standards.
The company’s own tender documents for the Nairobi bid contained an eligibility requirement stating that bidders must not have been blacklisted or debarred from participating in tenders by any national or state government agencies, autonomous bodies or institutions.
Zoomlion met that criterion only by virtue of having subsequently resolved its debarment through negotiation.
Whether that resolution, which involved an admission of wrongdoing, satisfies the spirit of a requirement designed to exclude corrupt actors is a question that City Hall’s procurement officials have conspicuously declined to answer.
In Ghana itself, the record is substantially worse. Beginning in 2013, investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni exposed the scale of corruption within the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency, known as GYEEDA, in what became one of the most significant procurement scandals in Ghanaian public life.
A government ministerial committee confirmed the findings. Between 2009 and 2012, nearly 500 million dollars was spent through GYEEDA. Zoomlion and other companies within the Jospong Group were identified as primary beneficiaries.
The committee found that Zoomlion received payments for work not done and systematically overcharged the government. As a single representative instance, the company charged the government 25 million cedis more than was warranted for providing tricycles.
The committee recommended the discontinuation of Zoomlion’s contracts. Successive Ghanaian administrations declined to act.
The Ghanaian Auditor-General returned to Zoomlion repeatedly in subsequent years. One report documented a waste bin contract, awarded on a sole-source basis to the Jospong Group, that was inflated by at least 130 million cedis.
Another found that 98 million cedis had been paid to eleven Jospong-linked companies for fumigation services already covered under Zoomlion’s existing contractual obligations.
Police investigations into the fumigation agreements were launched but produced no convictions. Under the Youth Employment Agency initiative, the arrangement that structured Zoomlion’s sweeper programme, the government paid 850 cedis per worker per month, of which only 250 cedis reached the workers themselves.
Zoomlion retained 600 cedis per worker as a management fee, an arrangement that labour rights advocates characterised as structurally exploitative.
Despite cabinet directives under President John Mahama’s first administration ordering the termination of Zoomlion’s sanitation contract, the company continued rendering services to the state after its contract expired in February 2013 and accumulated debts owed to it by the government in excess of 450 million cedis.
In June 2025, President Mahama, returned to office after the 2024 elections, finally terminated the Youth Employment Agency contract with Zoomlion entirely, citing transparency concerns and the exploitative compensation structure. All payments made to Zoomlion after the original contract’s expiration were ordered into an audit.
Jospong Group Executive Chairman Dr Joseph Siaw Agyepong, the controlling figure behind Zoomlion and listed as a director of Zoomlion Waste Services in Kenya, is simultaneously facing contempt proceedings in a Ghanaian High Court. In late 2025, he and three others were charged with flouting court orders after allegedly entering disputed land and directing the destruction of property belonging to Royal Bell Investment Limited and Terraform Development Limited despite the existence of a court order and a penal notice served upon them.
The application before the Ghanaian court sought his committal to imprisonment.
STATE HOUSE FINGERPRINTS
The Zoomlion contract did not emerge in a vacuum within City Hall. The connection between State House and the award runs through a specific sequence of events. On August 13, 2025, President William Ruto attended the Devolution Conference in Homa Bay.
The Jospong Group of Companies had been allocated a stand at the conference.
President Ruto visited that stand on the opening day and publicly praised Zoomlion for its waste management technology and facilities in Ghana. Eight days later, Zoomlion Waste Services Limited was incorporated in Kenya.
President Ruto and Sakaja in a past event.
In a public address delivered in Nairobi on January 20, 2026, eleven days before the formal notification of award to Zoomlion, President Ruto confirmed directly that his administration was involved in the procurement process.
He said at the time: “The national government is going to support the county government to deal with the menace of waste and garbage in Nairobi. There is procurement the county is doing; we are supporting them so that we provide a lasting solution to that challenge.”
Sources with knowledge of the arrangement told Kenya Insights that awareness of the Zoomlion deal was confined to a small number of individuals at State House and City Hall throughout the procurement and contracting stages, with the details kept deliberately opaque.
Governor Johnson Sakaja, for his part, has defended the contract in public primarily by speaking around it: insisting that no county functions have been ceded to the national government, invoking Section 6 of the Urban Areas and Cities Act 2019 to justify special financing arrangements for Nairobi as Kenya’s capital, and pointing to the scale of the city’s waste generation, approximately 3,000 metric tonnes daily, as justification for an ambitious intervention.
He has not addressed the procurement irregularities identified by his own technical team, the eligibility questions arising from Zoomlion’s debarment history, or the absence of the financial safeguards that his officials found missing from the agreement.
THE MAN WHO DIED BEFORE THE WHITEWASH
Engineer Charles Ngugi Gathara had served for more than a decade as Deputy Director for Water and Sanitation at City Hall before being appointed to chair the Zoomlion tender evaluation committee. He was 49 years old.
On the morning of February 16, 2026, he arrived at JKIA ahead of the flight to Accra, intending to lead a delegation that would verify, after the fact, the capacity and facilities of a company to which a contract had already been awarded. Aviation workers had gone on strike that morning, disrupting departures.
While waiting for the situation to resolve, Gathara began vomiting and collapsed. He was pronounced dead. His colleagues, once a Kenya Airways flight eventually departed at 8.53 in the evening, flew to Accra without him and spent three days visiting Zoomlion’s operations at the company’s invitation. Engineer Gathara was buried on February 27, 2026, at his home village in Gathondo, Embu County.
The decision to proceed with the Ghana trip without him, on the day of his death, has drawn quiet condemnation within City Hall.
More fundamentally, the entire exercise exposed the character of what passed for due diligence in this procurement.
An evaluation committee, headed by a Water and Sanitation official rather than a specialist in solid waste management or PPP finance, was assembled to travel to a company’s premises and see a presentation prepared by that company, after the contract had already been awarded.
Walter Omwenga, the Deputy Director for Environment and Final Disposal who was among those who made the Accra trip, told Kenya Insights before the delegation departed that due diligence by definition required physically verifying that a bidder had the capacity described in their documents before a contract is signed. He did not explain why that verification was taking place after signing.
THE COURT STEPS IN
On March 5, 2026, Justice Moses Ado of the Milimani Commercial and Tax Division issued a conservatory order barring the Nairobi County Government, its Environment Chief Officer, its Director of Supply Chain Management and the County Secretary from executing or implementing the contract pending the hearing and determination of a petition challenging the deal.
The order was obtained on an application filed by Jeremy Kinyua Emilio, who contends that the award to Zoomlion was illegal and unconstitutional, among other grounds because it was executed without the required approval of the Attorney General.
Kinyua raised specific concerns about the Sh50 million bank guarantee submitted by Zoomlion as part of the tender, describing it as disproportionately low relative to the evident scale and value of the project.
The figure is consistent with procurement documents that deliberately obscured the total contract sum: the tender, as advertised, specified no price. The conservatory order was granted pending a mention scheduled for March 16, 2026, for further directions.
The petition additionally argues that at least two local companies are currently executing waste management contracts in Nairobi under earlier tenders, one for the supply of heavy equipment and machinery at Dandora, another for solid waste collection in Kibra, and that the Zoomlion concession threatens to displace those arrangements.
Some of those contractors had already encountered delays in receiving county payments at the time the Zoomlion contract was awarded, an irony that has not been lost on the market.
MOMBASA’S WARNING AND A NATIONAL PATTERN
Nairobi is not the first Kenyan county to be drawn into the Jospong Group’s orbit.
In October 2025, it emerged that Mombasa County, under Governor Abdulswamad Shariff Nassir, had already signed a 35-year waste management contract with a Jospong entity worth Sh17 billion.
The Centre for Litigation Trust, a Mombasa-based civil society organisation, filed a High Court petition demanding disclosure of the procurement process and public participation records.
The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission has opened an investigation into the Mombasa arrangement. That investigation was ongoing when Nairobi signed its own, structurally similar, contract four months later.
The pattern is being remarked upon by governance specialists with mounting alarm. Two of Kenya’s largest urban county governments have now awarded long-term waste management concessions to Jospong Group entities under procurement conditions that critics describe as opaque, legally deficient and designed to exclude competition.
There is documented concern within government circles that other counties may follow, creating the conditions for a nationwide monopoly over one of municipal government’s most revenue-generating and publicly sensitive functions, held by a foreign company that Ghana itself has now repudiated.
WHAT THE LAW REQUIRED, AND WHAT WAS DONE
The Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act 2015 requires that PPP projects above defined financial thresholds receive approval from the PPP Directorate and be subjected to competitive bidding processes designed to ensure value for money.
The PPP Act 2021 sets out a distinct regulatory framework for arrangements involving private financing, construction and long-term operation of public infrastructure.
By classifying the Zoomlion transaction as a local Request for Proposal rather than an international PPP concession, City Hall bypassed the PPP Directorate entirely, eliminated the requirement for international competitive advertising and compressed the timeline in a manner that precluded meaningful market participation.
Senior procurement officials who reviewed the process for this publication used the word “irregular” with consistent frequency.
Legal experts have separately warned that the structure of the contract, particularly the twenty-year tenure and the exclusive access to Dandora, is sufficient to sustain a successful legal challenge by any company that was denied the opportunity to compete.
The Nairobi County Assembly was not consulted. Public participation records, required by statute for projects of this duration and character, have not been made available.
The County Cabinet has not published any resolution approving the engagement on the disclosed terms. The terms themselves, including the financial model, the payment schedule, the revenue-sharing arrangement for recycling proceeds and the liability regime, have not been disclosed to the public whose assets and funds the contract deploys over the next two decades.
THE COST OF WHAT WAS NOT DONE
Dandora has operated for four decades as one of the most egregious examples of institutional failure in the history of Kenyan urban governance.
In February 2026, the Environment and Land Court awarded Sh25.8 million in damages to 1,032 waste pickers whose constitutional rights were found to have been violated by their prolonged exposure to air pollution at the site.
Both the Nairobi County Government and the National Environment Management Authority were found jointly responsible for permitting those conditions to persist.
That judgment landed in the same week as the Zoomlion contract was being defended in public by the same county government that had just been found complicit in the suffering of the people who live and work at the dump.
The city generates 3,000 metric tonnes of waste daily. The sector, if managed transparently and competitively, could sustain significant recycling revenue and waste-to-energy income for the public good.
The question that the Zoomlion contract poses is not whether Nairobi needs a modern waste management system. It does, urgently and without further delay.
The question is whether a company with Zoomlion’s documented record of bribery, fraudulent billing and exploitative labour practices, admitted in writing to the World Bank, exposed by an independent press and confirmed by multiple government bodies in its home country, and finally terminated by the government that spawned it, was the appropriate vehicle through which to pursue that transformation.
The answer that City Hall’s own technical team gave to that question, in language that its political principals have chosen to disregard, was an unambiguous no.
NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 16 – Kenyan companies have recently attracted growing interest from Tanzanian billionaires, with several high-profile acquisitions raising questions about why investors from the neighbouring country are increasingly targeting local firms.
In 2024, Tanzanian businessman Edha Nahdi, the Managing Director of Amsons Group, acquired Bamburi Cement in a deal that strengthened the group’s presence in Kenya’s construction sector.
Following the takeover, Bamburi reported a double-digit increase in EBITDA, supported by group-level efficiencies. Through Bamburi, Amsons has also begun construction of a 5,000 tonnes-per-day clinker facility—equivalent to about 1.6 million tonnes annually—in Kwale County. The project is expected to create more than 1,000 direct jobs.
Nahdi has also expanded his presence in the Kenyan cement industry through Kalahari Cement Ltd, which last year acquired an additional 27 percent stake in East African Portland Cement Company from the National Social Security Fund. The transaction increased his stake in the company to 69 percent.
In another major development last week, Tanzanian billionaire Rostam Azizi acquired control of Nation Media Group from the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development.
Under the deal, AKFED sold its entire shareholding in NPRT Holdings Africa Limited—the entity that holds a 54.08 percent controlling stake in Nation Media Group—to Taarifa Ltd.
The transaction gave Azizi majority ownership of Nation Media Group through the acquisition of 92,618,177 ordinary shares. However, the company’s shares will continue trading on the Nairobi Securities Exchange and other cross-listed platforms.
Brookhurst International Schools delivered an outstanding performance at the World Scholars Cup Nairobi Light Round held on February 22, securing its fifth championship title and further cementing its reputation as a leading academic institution in global competitions.
The school emerged as one of the top performers in the prestigious competition, which brings together students from different countries to compete in debate, collaborative writing, and quiz-based challenges focused on global issues. Brookhurst scholars collectively won 33 trophies along with numerous gold and silver medals across the junior and senior divisions.
From the Kiserian campus, Brookhurst secured second place in the junior division and first place in the senior division. The Lavington campus also delivered impressive results, emerging first in the Senior Scholar’s Bowl, fourth overall in the senior division, and placing among the top ten in the junior division.
The victory marks a remarkable milestone for the school, which has maintained the top position in the senior division for five consecutive years since 2021. The scholars excelled across all competition categories including debate, collaborative writing, the Scholar’s Challenge, and the Scholar’s Bowl.
Among the standout performers were Darvin Nato, a Year 7 student, and Denzyl Siele, a Year 10 student from the Kiserian campus, who were ranked among the top scholars in their respective divisions. Their efforts played a key role in helping their teams secure second place in the junior division and first place in the senior division.
Denzyl described the experience as unforgettable.
“Representing Brookhurst was an amazing experience. I have participated in World Scholars before, but nothing quite compared to seeing my name ranked among the top scholars and realizing that our team, Team 630, had won the Nairobi Round 2026. Preparing for the competition wasn’t easy, but it was worth it. I’m grateful for the support from my parents and teachers and look forward to the Global Round in Malaysia and later the Tournament of Champions at Yale,” he said.
Darvin, who was among the top performers in the junior division, highlighted the importance of teamwork and determination.
“At Brookhurst International Schools we are always encouraged to aim high. This experience showed me that teamwork, confidence and hard work can take you far. Next time we’re aiming even higher as we prepare for the next round in Malaysia,” he said.
Teachers at the school also expressed pride in the scholars’ achievements.
Mildred Wambui, a teacher from the Lavington campus, said the victory was a moment of great pride after months of preparation.
“Hearing our school announced among the top winners after months of training and sacrifice was truly unforgettable. The extra training sessions, debate practice and writing challenges really paid off. Our slogan was teamwork, and that spirit clearly reflected in our results,” she said.
She added that the school is already preparing for the Global Round with even greater focus and determination.
Sandra Soti, a Year 10 student from the Lavington campus, also celebrated her team’s performance after finishing among the top ten overall.
“This was my second time participating in World Scholars. Last year I learned the game, and this year I was ready to play it. I’m excited to see what we can achieve next at the global stage in Malaysia,” she said.
The teams from Brookhurst have now qualified for the World Scholars Cup Global Round to be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in June. Successful participants will then advance to the prestigious Tournament of Champions at Yale University in the United States later in the year.
Brookhurst International Schools have consistently performed strongly in global competitions. In 2025, one of its scholars, Hope Wanjiku, advanced to the Tournament of Champions at Yale University where she competed with top students from around the world and ranked among the top thirty gold medalists globally.
Haju Yun, a Year 9 student from the Lavington campus, encouraged more students to participate in future competitions.
“World Scholars Cup is a great opportunity to meet new people, learn new ideas and build confidence. It opens doors to global experiences,” she said.
Dennis Nyaoro, a teacher at the Kiserian campus, emphasized that the competition provides students with opportunities beyond the traditional curriculum.
“World Scholars Cup allows learners to explore global issues through debate, writing and teamwork. It helps students develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills while interacting with peers from around the world,” he said.
With another impressive performance at the Nairobi Round, Brookhurst International Schools continue to strengthen their reputation as a centre of academic excellence and global competitiveness.
According to the Daily Nation, two politicians were overheard at a restaurant in Nairobi’s upscale Kilimani district discussing in hushed tones their desperate hope that properties they own in Dubai would escape the barrage of rockets and drones now pounding the Gulf region .
The panic follows escalating Middle East tensions after the United States and Israel launched strikes on Tehran, killing Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of Revolutionary Guard commanders . Iran retaliated fiercely, launching ballistic missiles across the region, including into the UAE, where drone debris triggered a massive fire at the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone.
Saboti MP Caleb Amisi has thrown gasoline on the fire, publicly alleging that President William Ruto’s swift condemnation of Iran wasn’t motivated by diplomatic principle:: but by personal financial exposure.
Amisi claimed that Kenyan leaders have “channeled billions of shillings into real estate” in Dubai, the UAE, Cyprus, and South Africa using “stolen public funds” . In a blistering attack on X, the MP suggested Ruto’s panic was driven by fear that his own Dubai assets could go up in smoke.
“This is why they panic,” Amisi wrote, accusing the political class of caring more about their foreign luxury portfolios than the Kenyan voters they plundered.
Dubai has long been a favorite offshore haven for Kenya’s wealthy elite, offering stability, anonymity, and glittering returns on real estate investment . But the recent Iranian strikes have shattered that illusion of safety.
Housing TV Africa reports that the attacks have sent jitters through foreign investors with Gulf assets, as airports, oil facilities, and critical infrastructure now find themselves in the crosshairs of a widening regional war .
While UAE authorities insist operations have largely resumed and air defenses intercepted most threats, the psychological damage is done: Kenyan politicians who once toasted their ill-gotten gains in Dubai’s champagne bars are now watching the news with white knuckles.
The Daily Nation also reports that one unnamed presidential hopeful has quietly relocated his family abroad even as he campaigns to lead Kenya: triggering murmurs among allies who now label him a “perpetual frequent flier” with “one foot firmly planted at home and the other already outside the country” .
Supporters fear they’re backing a “flight risk” who would abandon them at the first sign of trouble .
As Iranian missiles light up Middle East skies, they’ve also illuminated a uncomfortable truth about Kenya’s political class: while preaching service at home, many have stashed fortunes in the very war zones now under fire. And as their Dubai dream burns, Kenyans are left asking one question: whose money built those mansions in the first place?
A Nairobi woman has lost Sh540,000 she paid into Britam Holdings’ Akiba Savings Plan after her policy lapsed when a sudden job loss left her unable to keep up with monthly premiums of Sh90,000, according to a video she posted on social media.
In the six-minute clip, the woman says a friend who had invested in the same product convinced her it was a safe, long-term savings vehicle for her children’s future, with life cover attached.
When she lost her job and could no longer make payments, her agent told her she would have to clear the arrears in full before the policy could be reinstated.
When she escalated the matter to Britam’s customer care desk, she was told her entire Sh540,000 had been forfeited. “Where did it go? This was supposed to be an investment that makes profit,” she says in the recording.
Britam Holdings Plc, listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange, is Kenya’s largest life insurer by market share, holding a 25 per cent share of the life insurance market for the eighteenth consecutive year as at December 2024.
The group posted a pre-tax profit of Sh7.33 billion in the year ended December 31 2024, a 52 per cent increase from Sh4.82 billion the year before, on total assets of Sh208.5 billion.
The Akiba plan is an endowment product that combines a savings element with life cover. Britam markets it as a “risk-free” instrument that pays a guaranteed lump sum at maturity, with policy terms of between five and twelve years and a minimum monthly premium of Sh5,000.
According to the product’s terms, a surrender benefit is available only from the end of the twenty-fifth policy month. A policy that lapses before that point carries no cash surrender value, meaning premiums already paid are absorbed into the insurer’s reserves to cover administrative charges, agent commissions and mortality costs.
The distinction matters because endowment products are routinely sold by agents to customers who may not fully understand that the product is a long-term contractual commitment, not a liquid savings account.
Industry practitioners say the consequences of a lapse before the two-year threshold are rarely explained in plain language at the point of sale.
A STRUCTURAL MISMATCH
The viral case sits against a difficult economic backdrop. Formal employment accounts for only 15 per cent of Kenya’s total workforce of 20.8 million, with the informal sector employing an estimated 17.4 million people, according to KNBS data from the 2025 Economic Survey.
Real wages in the private sector declined in inflation-adjusted terms for the fifth consecutive year in 2024, with real average annual earnings falling to Sh689,300 against Sh694,000 the year before.
For workers in the formal sector, income shocks such as sudden retrenchment are not covered by endowment policies, which protect only against death during the policy term.
Premium waiver on disability is a separate optional rider, and unemployment is not covered under standard terms.
Consumer advocacy groups have for years argued that endowment products sold to lower-to-middle income earners carry a structural mismatch: the payment discipline they demand is inconsistent with the income volatility that characterises much of Kenya’s workforce.
Comments under the viral video reflect similar experiences. Several users said they had also been unable to access any refund after defaulting on Britam Akiba policies, with one noting that even an attempt to surrender the policy mid-term would result in the loss of most premiums paid to date.
Another said Britam’s statements showed unexplained deductions that had not been adequately explained by the insurer.
WHAT THE POLICY ACTUALLY PROVIDES
The Akiba plan’s maturity benefit is the sum assured, paid as a lump sum at the end of the term. In the event of the policyholder’s death before maturity, a waiver of premium provision keeps the policy in force and guarantees payment of the maturity benefit. An optional lump sum death rider can be added, up to a maximum equal to the sum assured on the main benefit. Policy loans are available from the twenty-fifth month. Tax relief on premiums of up to Sh60,000 annually is available under the Income Tax Act.
The plan does not cover retrenchment, salary cuts, or any other income disruption short of death or disability.
The product literature does not include an illustration of what a policyholder would recover if they were forced to exit before completing twenty-five months of payments, a scenario that for many savers on volatile incomes is a realistic risk.
The Insurance Regulatory Authority, which supervises all licensed underwriters under the Insurance Act Cap 487, has a statutory consumer disputes mechanism under Section 204A of the Act. Aggrieved policyholders can lodge a written complaint with the Commissioner of Insurance, whose determination is subject to appeal to the Insurance Tribunal within thirty days. In recent years the IRA has issued fines to several insurers for failure to honour claims, but has not published any specific directive on endowment lapse disclosure standards.
BRITAM DECLINES TO COMMENT
Kenya Insights sent written queries to Britam’s head of communications and to the group’s corporate affairs department seeking comment on the specific complaint, the company’s reinstatement policy for lapsed Akiba policies, and whether the group was reviewing how lapse consequences are disclosed at point of sale. No response was received before publication time.
The IRA was similarly contacted for comment on whether existing regulations require insurers to provide a surrender value projection at point of sale for endowment products. No response was received.
Financial sector practitioners say the complaint is unlikely to be isolated. Because Britam has more than 2,500 financial advisors selling products across the country, the Akiba plan has penetrated deep into the middle-income and lower-middle-income segments where income volatility is highest.
Industry insiders say agents are incentivised on new business written, with limited accountability for policy persistency, creating a structural incentive to sell without adequately stress-testing a prospective client’s ability to sustain premiums over a five-to-twelve year horizon.
OPTIONS AVAILABLE TO AFFECTED POLICYHOLDERS
Policyholders who have passed the twenty-fifth month threshold can surrender their policies for a cash value, though the amount recovered will be substantially less than total premiums paid, particularly in the early years of the contract. Those who believe they were not adequately informed of lapse terms at point of sale can file a written complaint with Britam’s customer service department, and if unsatisfied, escalate to the IRA’s dispute resolution desk. The IRA’s complaints line is 0800 723 225.
Alternative savings products in the Kenyan market that carry daily liquidity and no minimum commitment period include money market funds. Britam itself operates a money market fund under its asset management division. Other providers include Sanlam, ICEA Lion, CIC, and the Co-operative Bank unit trust platform, among others.
On a night that Rwandan banking officials are still reluctant to discuss openly, unknown operatives gained access to the digital nerve centre of Equity Bank Rwanda and began moving money. Not in trickles, but in avalanches. SIM cards with no prior transaction history were suddenly purchasing mobile money float worth Rwf100 million apiece.
At the daily transfer cap of Rwf2 million, moving Rwf4.7 billion through legitimate channels would have required more than 2,000 individual transactions over multiple days.
Instead, it vanished in what investigators now believe was a single coordinated offensive through bulk float purchases, a channel that sits outside the strict withdrawal limits governing conventional banking and that, until now, nobody had thought to weaponise at this scale.
Equity Bank Rwanda confirmed on March 15, 2026 that it had detected and contained irregular transactions within its systems, triggering internal security and incident response procedures and reversing the majority of the transactions within 24 hours.
The bank was careful with its language. It did not name a figure. It did not say it had been hacked. It said its monitoring systems had worked. “Our internal monitoring systems detected the irregular transaction activity and immediately triggered the security and incident response protocols in line with operational and risk management procedures,” the Kigali-based lender said in its public announcement.
What the statement did not say was that the fraud operation had apparently already succeeded in moving close to Rwf4.7 billion, equivalent to roughly USD3 million to USD4 million, before those protocols closed the door.
A bank official who spoke to Taarifa Rwanda, the Kigali-based outlet that first broke the story, confirmed the figure and the partial recovery. Investigators have so far retrieved approximately Rwf1.2 billion.
That leaves Rwf3.5 billion still unaccounted for, scattered across mobile wallets, agent accounts and the accounts of dozens of individuals who may or may not have known what they were receiving.
Attempts by this publication to obtain comment from the National Bank of Rwanda were unsuccessful. Rwanda Investigation Bureau spokesperson Dr Thierry Murangira said he had no information on the case. The office of the Finance Minister did not respond.
THE VENDOR AT THE CENTRE
The suspected entry point into Equity Bank Rwanda’s systems was not through the bank itself but through a third-party platform.
Investigators have zeroed in on ESICIA Ltd, a Kigali-based technology company that has provided internet banking solutions to financial institutions in Rwanda since 2005. ESICIA, which markets itself as ISO 27001 and PCI DSS certified and holds contracts across the banking, government and telecoms sectors in the region, supplies Equity Bank Rwanda with a vendor-managed internet banking platform that the bank operates under licence.
Investigators are now examining whether the ESICIA platform was exploited to gain unauthorised access to the bank’s infrastructure or to manipulate transactions.
The Rwanda Investigation Bureau has moved to obtain system access logs that would show who entered the platform, at what time and what actions were performed.
Digital forensic specialists are simultaneously reviewing server records and user activity trails. ESICIA Chief Executive Officer Innocent Kaneza declined to comment when contacted by Taarifa. He did not respond to this publication’s enquiries either.
The implications of a vendor-side breach, if confirmed, would be severe. It would mean that the security of a Tier-1 bank’s digital operations had been compromised not from within its own walls but through a contractor’s system, one that sits between the bank and its customers.
It would also raise uncomfortable questions about how Rwanda’s central bank supervises the third-party technology arrangements of supervised institutions, and whether ESICIA’s ISO certifications accurately reflected the real-world security of its systems.
THE MOBILE MONEY TRAP
To understand how Rwf4.7 billion could move so quickly without triggering alarms, investigators have had to examine a gap buried inside Rwanda’s digital payments architecture.
The mechanism is called float. In Rwanda’s mobile money ecosystem, registered agents who facilitate transactions for customers obtain their operating balances by depositing equivalent cash into trust accounts held at banks.
The telecom operator, in this case MoMo Rwanda, then credits the agent’s mobile wallet with digital value that mirrors the deposit. That float is the working capital of Rwanda’s mobile economy. Without it, agents cannot transact.
The fraud appears to have weaponised this mechanism. Rather than moving funds through the bank’s normal transfer channels, where daily limits would have made bulk movement impossible, the perpetrators are believed to have used the internet banking platform to generate float purchases of extraordinary size.
SIM cards that had never previously received even Rwf1,000 were suddenly credited with Rwf100 million apiece in float.
Some of those SIM cards were registered outside Rwanda and were not recognised agents within the mobile money ecosystem. Nobody has yet explained how they were allowed to make such purchases. “That is where the biggest question arises,” a source familiar with the investigation said. “Who issued those SIM cards, who owns them and how were they allowed to purchase such large amounts of float?”
A senior official at MoMo Rwanda told Taarifa that he had learned of the matter from press reports and declined to provide details.
Neither MoMo Rwanda nor the National Bank of Rwanda has issued any public statement on the fraud. The silence from key institutions has drawn sharp comment from financial sector observers, who say it reflects a troubling pattern of opacity around major incidents in Rwanda’s financial system.
THIRTY-FIVE IN CUSTODY, SIX IN UGANDA
As of March 15, 35 people were in custody in Rwanda. The Rwanda Investigation Bureau is leading the probe, conducting forensic analysis of digital systems, financial records and electronic devices seized from suspects.
Most of those detained are believed to be individuals whose bank or mobile money accounts received suspicious transfers linked to the fraudulent transactions.
Investigators are working to determine whether the recipients knowingly participated or whether their accounts were used without their full understanding by whoever orchestrated the scheme.
“You cannot receive Rwf100 million in your account and claim you don’t know where it came from,” an official said. “Investigators want to know who sent the money and why it landed there.”
The human mule architecture of the fraud, in which stolen funds are dispersed rapidly across hundreds of accounts, is consistent with sophisticated cybercrime operations seen in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa over the past decade.
Once money is fragmented across multiple wallets, recovering it requires either the willing cooperation of every account holder or a court process to freeze and claw back each deposit separately.
Among those detained are two Equity Bank Rwanda employees from the IT department, both connected to data centre operations. Their detention does not necessarily establish guilt, bank officials have been careful to note. Investigators are examining whether perpetrators may have gained physical or technical access to the bank’s systems from inside.
“The suspicion was that there must have been physical access to the data centre,” a source said. “But even that I cannot confirm. RIB needs to complete the forensic investigation.” Simultaneously, six suspects were arrested in Uganda.
Police forensic teams are extracting and analysing digital images from devices seized in the Ugandan arrests to determine whether those individuals were directly involved or were themselves used by a wider network.
THE MWANGI CRACKDOWN THAT WASN’T ENOUGH
The timing of the Rwanda breach is as damaging as its scale. It lands less than a year after Equity Group CEO Dr James Mwangi launched the most aggressive anti-fraud purge in East African banking history, one in which more than 1,500 Equity employees across the group’s operations were dismissed in successive waves between May and July 2025 after internal audits uncovered a culture of staff collusion, unauthorised transaction facilitation and conflicts of interest.
The trigger was a Sh1.5 billion payroll fraud in Kenya, in which the IT system credentials of a Group Processing Centre manager were used to process over 40 transactions totalling nearly Sh1.5 billion before the money was transferred to rival banks.
Mwangi, who told Business Daily in May 2025 that he would be “consistently ruthless” in the purge, extended the clean-up to Uganda in June 2025 and pledged to sweep through all seven of the group’s operating markets. Rwanda, Tanzania, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo were explicitly named as jurisdictions where similar integrity audits would follow.
Eight months after that pledge, fraudsters have apparently struck the Rwanda subsidiary in what investigators believe was an externally orchestrated attack rather than the insider collusion that drove the Kenyan losses.
But the distinction offers limited comfort to a bank that had staked its regional reputation on having cleaned house.
The Rwanda fraud raises the harder question: whether a determined, technically capable external adversary could still defeat a bank’s defences even after its internal vulnerabilities had been addressed, and whether the audit of human integrity had distracted attention from the robustness of the digital infrastructure and the third-party systems that run it.
A PATTERN ACROSS KIGALI
The Equity incident is not an isolated event. Banking sector sources have told this publication and sister outlets in Kigali that at least three other Rwandan financial institutions have been targeted in comparable attacks in recent months.
BPR Bank Rwanda, the KCB Group subsidiary that is the country’s largest commercial bank by branch network with over 154 outlets, was reportedly struck by a similar fraud scheme involving approximately Rwf1.2 billion.
NCBA Bank Rwanda faced a related incident involving around Rwf400 million, although the bank reportedly managed to recover about Rwf250 million.
Bank of Kigali, the country’s dominant lender controlling more than 30 per cent of all banking assets, has also been affected by a comparable incident in recent months, though the precise amount has not been independently confirmed.
Most striking of all, sources within the banking sector have told Taarifa that even the National Bank of Rwanda itself has recently experienced attempted cyber intrusions.
In the most brazen reported case, the suspected perpetrators allegedly operated from a hotel located less than 50 metres from the central bank’s premises, attempting to penetrate the BNR’s network from a position virtually within its shadow.
The frequency and ambition of the attacks suggest a level of organised criminal capability that has not previously been publicly acknowledged in Rwanda, a country that has invested heavily in positioning Kigali as a digital finance hub and that is currently implementing a Financial Sector Development Strategy 2025-2030 explicitly aimed at accelerating the growth of digital banking and fintech.
THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME
Equity Bank Rwanda has been targeted before. In November 2019, Rwandan authorities arrested 12 people, including eight Kenyans, three Rwandans and a Ugandan, in an attempted cyber-fraud operation targeting the bank. They were convicted and sentenced to eight-year jail terms in 2021.
The 2026 attack appears far more sophisticated in its exploitation of the mobile money float mechanism, its cross-border architecture and its apparent use of a vendor’s system as the entry point rather than a direct assault on the bank’s own network. It is a reminder that the criminal ecosystem learns, adapts and probes for new gaps even as institutions patch the ones already known.
Equity Bank Rwanda, in a statement released alongside its confirmation of the fraud, said it maintains a zero-tolerance approach to financial crime and is continuing to strengthen its cybersecurity infrastructure, transaction monitoring systems and internal controls.
The bank insisted that no customer funds had been lost and that any unrecovered amounts would be absorbed by the institution.
The assurance, standard in such circumstances, means that Equity Group’s balance sheet will ultimately bear the exposure even as RIB works to recover the Rwf3.5 billion still outstanding.
For now, Rwanda’s financial sector regulator has said nothing. MoMo Rwanda has said nothing. The bank itself has said as little as it legally must.
The silence, investigators and observers agree, is itself an answer of sorts, one that says the full dimensions of what happened that night are still being mapped, and that the institutions responsible for oversight are not yet ready to explain how the maps came to have such large blank spaces in them.
The first sign that something was wrong came just after midnight. Vehicles without registration plates began assembling on the access roads near Karen’s Ngong Road junction.
By 2am, a force of more than 50 armed men, some in police uniform and others in balaclavas, had pushed through the gates of Dari Business Park and locked every employee of Tamarind Restaurant outside the premises.
Former Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Raphael Tuju, roused from sleep at his adjacent home, walked out to find a small army in possession of his property. The army refused to say who had sent them.
It was a spectacular, and violent, ending to a legal saga that has consumed the former Jubilee Party secretary-general for the better part of a decade.
Tuju filmed himself from outside his own gate at 3:30am, speaking directly to the camera in a video that spread across social media before most of Nairobi had woken up.
“I have been kicked out by armed police officers who came in six unidentified vehicles. This is pure impunity because they have no court orders to conduct such a raid.”
Tuju said the officers communicated with each other in their mother tongue, shielded their faces each time he raised his phone, and told him only that they were following orders from above. When he demanded to see court documents authorising the eviction, he was told there were none. “This is not law,” he said. “If it is law, it is the law of the jungle.”
To understand what happened in the darkness of Karen on Saturday morning one must go back to 2014, when Raphael Tuju, then a media millionaire with ambitions that matched the size of his real estate dreams, fixed his eye on a 22-acre forested estate along Tree Lane in Karen.
At the heart of the property stood a Victorian-era bungalow built by Scottish missionary Dr Albert Patterson more than a century earlier.
The building had been preserved with almost religious care, its 60-year-old refrigerator still running, a gramophone in the parlour, Dr Patterson’s original furniture in place and the forest canopy unbroken overhead. Rooms were let at Sh43,000 a night for honeymooners.
Tuju’s plan was to transform the estate into the kind of establishment that would rival Windsor Golf Hotel or Hemingways on Mbagathi Ridge: boutique accommodation, a high-end restaurant named Tamarind Karen, a wellness sanctuary called Entim Sidai, and a ring of luxury residential villas at Sh100 million each.
The vehicle was his company Dari Limited, and the financier was the East African Development Bank.
On April 10, 2015, EADB disbursed Sh943.9 million, the equivalent of 9.3 million US dollars, to Dari Limited under a facility agreement that named Tuju, his three children Mano, Alma and Yma, and a related company, S.A.M Company Limited, as guarantors.
The properties along Tree Lane, Ngong Road and Mwitu Road in Karen were charged as security. The first interest payment fell due in October 2015. Dari paid it. It would be the only payment EADB ever received.
What followed, in Tuju’s telling, was a cascade of broken promises. EADB had committed to a second tranche of Sh294 million for the construction of the residential units but declined to release those funds, Tuju has alleged, because the bank wanted additional security over an Upper Hill property already pledged to the Bank of Africa.
Without the second disbursement, he argued, the project unravelled and with it his ability to service the debt. EADB disputes the account and courts in London agreed with the bank, ruling that the second facility was discussed but never formally agreed and therefore never owed.
In December 2018 EADB invoked the dispute resolution clause in the original facility agreement and sued Dari Limited and its guarantors before the High Court of Justice in London. Judge Daniel Toledano ruled against Tuju in July 2019, ordering repayment of more than 15.1 million US dollars, equivalent at the time to well over Sh1.5 billion.
Tuju’s appeal before Lord Justice Leggatt was dismissed. By the time the Kenyan courts adopted the UK judgment in February 2020, the debt had grown further through accumulated interest and currency movements.
Tuju responded by opening every legal front available to him. He challenged the adoption of the UK judgment in the Kenyan High Court and lost. He fought at the Court of Appeal and lost again. He petitioned the Supreme Court, sought to have Supreme Court judges removed before the Judicial Service Commission, was barred from the apex court on procedural grounds, and eventually filed a case at the East African Court of Justice in Arusha.
In Nairobi he accused senior advocates of fabricating affidavits and colluding with the bank’s former Kenya country manager to deceive multiple courts. He filed criminal complaints with the DCI and the ODPP. He told courts that a Dubai investor identified as ZLivia had been willing to inject fresh equity into the project but that EADB had blocked the deal, and that KCB Group had been ready to take over the loan but was similarly obstructed.
Through every round of litigation, temporary court orders and injunctions kept auctioneers at bay. EADB fought back, seeking to have Tuju and his three children jailed or fined for contempt of court, and filing bankruptcy proceedings against them individually.
PricewaterhouseCoopers partners Muniu Thoithi and George Weru were appointed receiver managers over Dari Limited in December 2019, though that appointment was successfully contested for a period. The debt, which started at 9.3 million dollars, had by 2026 grown to the equivalent of Sh4.5 billion according to EADB.
Tuju disputes the figure and argues the bank’s running total is inflated by punitive default interest applied in bad faith.
The final chapter opened on Monday, March 9. Justice Josephine Wayua Mong’are of the Milimani Commercial Court struck out Dari Limited’s amended plaint, ruling that the issues raised had already been determined across multiple forums and were substantially res judicata.
The court vacated the injunctions that had since October 2024 barred Garam Investment Auctioneers and Knight Frank Kenya from advertising, attaching or selling the Karen properties. The road to auction was open.
On Wednesday night, March 11, more than 100 men arrived at Dari Business Park on motorbikes. Tuju, who had received no notice, walked out to find strangers claiming the property had a new owner and demanding he vacate immediately.
He stood his ground, filmed the confrontation and called Karen Police Station. Officers arrived and restored order. He filed a report, returned inside and believed the matter would be addressed in court. Then came Saturday.
The force that arrived in the early hours of March 14 was a different kind of operation altogether. Tuju has suggested, based on the equipment carried and the coordination on display, that the unit included elements of the Rapid Response Unit, the elite GSU formation based at Ruiru that handles the most sensitive internal security operations in the country.
The Kenya Police Service had not confirmed which unit carried out the operation by the time of publication, and no statement had emerged from the Inspector General’s office.
According to Tuju’s account, corroborated by videos he recorded at the scene, the officers arrived in at least seven vehicles, several without registration plates. Some wore full police uniform.
Others had covered their faces with balaclavas. When Tuju approached, officers turned away from his camera. When he asked for court orders, he was told there were none. When he asked who had given the orders, he was told only that the orders came from above.
Restaurant staff and security guards employed at Tamarind Karen were pushed outside the gates. The officers locked themselves inside the compound. Tuju stood at his own perimeter wall in the dark as more vehicles arrived and dawn was still hours away.
“They will have to kill me and bury me in Rarieda. Entim Sidai, Tamarind Karen and Dari Business Park will only change hands over my dead body.”
In the video Tuju addressed his children Mano, Alma and Yma by name, telling them he was protecting the family business and would not give way to what he described as state-backed criminality. “First of all, I would like to encourage my children, who I know will be watching this video, that I am only protecting my family business which belongs to my family,” he said.
The Karen raid did not occur in isolation. Earlier on Wednesday evening, Fairways Hotel in Kisumu, owned by former Principal Secretary Irungu Nyakera, was attacked by a group of men who caused damage worth millions of shillings and assaulted security staff. Nyakera attributed the attack to political opponents and fired warning shots into the air to disperse the intruders.
DCI Director Amin Mohammed, speaking at the Police Leadership Academy in Nairobi on Thursday during a national security commanders meeting, confirmed that several suspects from both incidents had been arrested. “Goons are criminals, and we have no place for criminals,” Amin said, adding that those already identified had been arraigned in court while efforts to identify others were continuing.
Internal Security Principal Secretary Raymond Omollo echoed the position, saying the government would not tolerate violence or hooliganism and promising legal accountability for perpetrators. Neither official addressed the Saturday operation at Dari Business Park, which by all accounts involved uniformed officers rather than private goons.
On Friday, March 13, the day before the raid, Tuju walked to the Supreme Court building and delivered a letter personally addressed to Chief Justice Martha Koome.
Speaking to journalists outside, he said he had chosen institutions over retaliation. “I have come to the judiciary today only with a letter and not with goons,” he said. “If you allow our country to go the goons way then we will be heading to anarchy, chaos, in other words, a failed state.”
The letter, copies of which were submitted simultaneously to the DCI, the EACC and the ODPP, alleged that a sitting judge in the Commercial Division of the High Court had been approached by a broker, a former judge and a lawyer who sought Sh10 million in exchange for influencing the outcome of his pending appeal.
Tuju said the three individuals were arrested after they visited his Karen home and made the bribery pitch. He named them in separate communications to investigative agencies.
On March 12, Justice Mong’are, leaving the division on transfer, declined to grant interim conservatory orders that would have halted the auction pending the appeal but certified the matter as urgent and granted leave to appeal.
The next hearing before the presiding judge of the division was scheduled for March 17. With his property already occupied by officers who arrived in the night and declined to leave, it is not immediately clear what relief that hearing can provide.
Tuju’s legal resistance has been nothing short of exhausting to document. He has fought in courts in London, Nairobi and Arusha. He has used every procedural mechanism available: injunctions, stays, contempt applications, constitutional petitions, criminal complaints and judicial integrity petitions.
He has accused lawyers of fabricating affidavits, accused judges of soliciting bribes, accused the bank of predatory lending and accused auctioneers of operating without proper authority. He has prevailed in isolated procedural battles while losing the broader war of attrition. What he had never done, until Saturday morning, was physically lost possession of the property.
The question being asked across Kenya’s legal and political establishment on Saturday is whether the operation was a lawful enforcement of a judgment obtained across multiple courts over eleven years, or whether the deployment of what appeared to be state security forces to execute a commercial debt recovery in the dead of night, without presenting court orders to the registered owner, amounts to an extrajudicial action that should alarm every property holder in the country. Tuju himself has framed the issue as nothing less than a constitutional test. “This is not law,” he said, standing alone outside his locked gate in the dark. “If it is law, it is the law of the jungle.”
When James Mworia took the wheel at Centum Investment Company in 2010, inheriting an institution whose roots stretch back to Kenya’s post-independence ambitions in 1967, he arrived as the steward of one of East Africa’s most formidable investment portfolios.
He had blue-chip stakes in the country’s most dependable income-generating businesses: beverages, insurance, financial services, a fast-growing micro-lender and a publisher that had served generations of Kenyan schoolchildren. The company was a machine that made money for its more than 36,000 shareholders. Sixteen years later, the machine is producing losses.
The announcement on Friday that Centum had completed the sale of its entire residual stake in Sidian Bank, exiting a 25-year investment at what the company itself described only as a “modest financial gain” relative to book value, has crystallised what many analysts and shareholders have long feared: that Mworia has methodically sold every business that was generating returns and left investors stranded with the ones haemorrhaging cash.
The reaction in market forums was immediate, visceral and almost unanimous in its condemnation. It is not difficult to understand why.
Centum always sells the profitable businesses and ends up holding the loss-making ones. Mworia killed ICDC long time ago.
THE EXIT LEDGER: NINE PROFITABLE DEPARTURES, ONE DAMNING PATTERN
The numbers are now on the record and they tell a story that no public relations exercise can soften. According to data compiled by financial research platform PesaWall, Centum has made at least nine major exits over the course of Mworia’s tenure.
Without exception, every single one of those businesses generated a positive gross internal rate of return. Not one was a distressed sale. Not one was a company that needed to be exited. They were, by the company’s own published performance metrics, exactly what a holding company is supposed to accumulate and retain.
The exits begin with Carbacid Investments in 2011. Centum had acquired a 22.8 percent stake at a cost of Sh400 million.
It was sold after just 23 months, generating Sh1.2 billion in exit proceeds for a gross IRR of 66.9 percent. On the face of it, a spectacular return. But Carbacid, a carbon dioxide manufacturer serving both industrial and medical clients, was a low-risk, annuity-style business with inelastic demand.
At a 23-month holding period, Centum surrendered decades of compounding income for a single-event gain.
The Minet exit, selling a 21.5 percent stake in the insurance brokerage formerly known as AON after a 85-month holding period, returned Sh1 billion on a Sh200 million investment for a gross IRR of 52.4 percent.
UAP Insurance, now subsumed into Old Mutual, was sold in 2015 at a gross IRR of 39.9 percent: Sh5.5 billion in exit proceeds on a Sh900 million cost over 69 months. Insurance is one of the most durable recurring-income businesses on any continent. Once a customer is on a policy, the renewal rates are extraordinary. Centum sold it.
Platinum Credit, the micro-lender operating as Platcorp Holdings across Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, was exited in 2018 after a 63-month holding period.
Exit proceeds of Sh2.7 billion on a Sh800 million investment produced a gross IRR of 38.9 percent. Consumer lending to underbanked populations in East Africa was, and remains, a growth business with structural tailwinds.
The company went to other owners who continued to harvest it. Nairobi Bottlers generated Sh8.6 billion in exit proceeds on a Sh700 million cost over a 126-month holding period for a gross IRR of 34.3 percent.
Almasi Beverages delivered Sh10.9 billion in proceeds on Sh1.8 billion over the identical 126-month period for a gross IRR of 25.9 percent. These were Coca-Cola franchise bottlers with the most recognised consumer brand on the planet behind them.
GenAfrica Asset Managers, Kenya’s second-largest pension fund manager at the time of exit, was sold to New York-based Kuramo Capital in 2018. Centum realised Sh2.4 billion on a Sh1.1 billion investment over 53 months for a gross IRR of 24.4 percent.
Asset management is a recurring-fee business with negligible capital requirements and extraordinary margins at scale. Centum gave it up.
Kenya Wine Agencies Limited, the KWAL spirits and wines distributor sold to South Africa’s Distell in 2017, generated Sh1.1 billion on a Sh300 million entry cost over 96 months for a gross IRR of 20.8 percent. Even Rift Valley Railways, a quick-turnaround trade that returned only 4.4 percent gross IRR in 14 months, was at least a profitable exit.
Now comes Sidian Bank. Centum first invested in the lender in 2001 when it operated as K-Rep Bank, lifted its stake to 67.54 percent with a Sh4.3 billion acquisition in November 2014, began disposing in 2023 and has now exited entirely via the sale of its remaining 50 percent stake in Bakki Holdco Limited, the vehicle that held a 27.2 percent direct stake in the bank.
The carrying value of the investment was Sh1.1 billion. The gain, by Centum’s own description, was “modest.” At the moment of final sale, Sidian’s assets had grown to Sh94.8 billion from Sh44.79 billion in December 2023 and deposits had more than doubled to Sh78.11 billion in September 2025 from Sh27.6 billion two years prior. The bank had been promoted to mid-tier status in September last year. They sold it on the way up.
CENTUM’S NOTABLE EXITS: THE COMPLETE SCORECARD
Source: PesaWall Research / Centum Investment Company annual disclosures. Gross IRR is before costs and fees and excludes dividends received during holding period.
Company Exited
Stake
Cost
Holding Period
Exit Proceeds
Gross IRR
Carbacid Investments
22.8%
Sh 0.4bn
23 months
Sh 1.2bn
66.90%
Minet (formerly AON)
21.5%
Sh 0.2bn
85 months
Sh 1.0bn
52.40%
UAP Insurance (Old Mutual)
24.2%
Sh 0.9bn
69 months
Sh 5.5bn
39.90%
Platinum Credit
36.0%
Sh 0.8bn
63 months
Sh 2.7bn
38.90%
Nairobi Bottlers Ltd
27.6%
Sh 0.7bn
126 months
Sh 8.6bn
34.29%
Almasi Beverages Limited
53.9%
Sh 1.8bn
126 months
Sh 10.9bn
25.90%
GenAfrica Asset Managers
73.4%
Sh 1.1bn
53 months
Sh 2.4bn
24.40%
Kenya Wine Agencies (KWAL)
26.4%
Sh 0.3bn
96 months
Sh 1.1bn
20.76%
Rift Valley Railways
10.0%
Sh 0.06bn
14 months
Sh 0.08bn
4.40%
Sidian Bank (via Bakki Holdco — final exit March 2026)
Carrying value Sh 1.1bn — “Modest gain” (undisclosed proceeds)
Note: The table does not include dividends received from investments, which formed part of the IRR calculation in each case.
Selling a profitable bank to put money in failed real estate is crazy. I hope they return this cash to shareholders as a special dividend.
WHAT WAS KEPT: A PORTFOLIO OF COMPOUNDING DESTRUCTION
The combined exit proceeds from the nine major divestments enumerated above run into the tens of billions of shillings.
The question that 36,000 shareholders deserve answered is: where did the money go? The answer is on Centum’s balance sheet, buried under impairment lines, finance cost disclosures and subsidiary loss statements. It went into Two Rivers Development.
It went into the Akiira Geothermal project. It went into the Lamu coal-fired power plant. It went into Longhorn Publishers. These are not speculative conclusions. They are the publicly stated capital deployment decisions of the company’s own management.
Two Rivers Mall and its associated development vehicle, Two Rivers Development Limited, is the single largest destroyer of value in Centum’s history.
The mixed-use development along the Northern Bypass, financed with an Sh8 billion facility from Co-operative Bank that was later refinanced through Standard Bank and subsequently through multiple restructuring rounds, was presented to shareholders as a transformative urban project at a total investment cost of Sh25 billion. What it has delivered instead is a cascade of financial catastrophe.
In the financial year ended March 2021, Two Rivers’ finance costs drove Centum to a loss before tax of Sh2.33 billion. Without the Two Rivers drag, the loss would have been a comparatively manageable Sh473 million.
This was Centum’s first net loss in 42 years of operating history. The following year the group loss continued. In the year ended March 2023, the consolidated net loss after tax exploded to Sh7.31 billion, driven by a Sh3.87 billion impairment provision on TRDL’s undeveloped land and sustained high finance costs. The subsidiary in which Centum holds a 58 percent stake booked a standalone loss of Sh7.09 billion in that year alone.
The Two Rivers SEZ, branded as TRIFIC, was supposed to be the redemptive chapter in this saga.
It has not been. In the six months to September 2025, the TRIFIC SEZ lost Sh584.5 million, more than doubling the Sh288 million loss in the same period the prior year.
The core Two Rivers Development subsidiary added a further Sh90.68 million in losses over the same half-year, widening from Sh67.7 million.
In total, four of Centum’s six reporting business units were posting losses in the latest available half-year results. Pre-tax losses more than tripled compared to the prior period.
The headline net loss of Sh326 million in the six months to September 2025 was only partially disguised by a Sh296.71 million tax credit that flatters the reported figure.
The Akiira Geothermal project occupies its own chapter in this ledger of misjudgement. Centum invested Sh1.97 billion in Akiira Power in 2016 for a 37.5 percent stake in a proposed 140-megawatt plant in the Greater Olkaria area. Shareholders were also told that Centum had invested Sh2 billion in Amu Power, the consortium behind the now-dead 1,050-megawatt Lamu coal power plant.
By 2022, the Lamu investment had been written to zero. The Sh2 billion was gone.
On the geothermal side, two exploratory wells sunk at a cost of approximately Sh1.2 billion failed to meet production capacity. By September 2022, the carrying value of the Akiira investment had fallen to Sh1.07 billion from the original Sh1.97 billion entry cost.
In FY2023, a further Sh900 million impairment was recognised. The total destruction of value across just the two energy projects runs to approximately Sh5 billion.
Undeterred by this record, Centum in May 2024 acquired a further 37.5 percent stake in Akiira from a UK fund, using more shareholder capital to double down on a project that had by then absorbed billions without producing a single kilowatt of electricity.
The book value of the expanded position at March 2024 stood at approximately Sh1 billion. There is no publicly disclosed timeline for the 140-megawatt plant to be commissioned.
Longhorn Publishers rounds out the gallery.
The NSE-listed educational publisher in which Centum holds a significant stake posted a net loss of Sh571.33 million in the financial year ended June 2023, the worst since its listing in 2012, on revenues that fell 27.3 percent to Sh1.07 billion.
In the year to June 2025, revenue fell a further 56 percent to Sh672 million while losses came in at Sh261.44 million. The company’s equity turned negative in the first half of the year to December 2024, with accumulated losses exceeding total equity.
Centum’s thesis that the Competency Based Curriculum transition would create a supercycle for educational publishers has instead produced the opposite: a company so damaged by procurement delays and curriculum uncertainty that it is now technically insolvent on a standalone equity basis.
THE LOSSES IN NUMBERS: WHAT SHAREHOLDERS ARE HOLDING
Two Rivers Development (TRDL) group loss FY2023: Sh7.09 billion | TRDL impairment provision FY2023: Sh3.87 billion | Centum consolidated net loss FY2023: Sh7.31 billion | Two Rivers SEZ (TRIFIC) loss — 6 months to Sept 2025: Sh584.5 million | Core TRDL loss — 6 months to Sept 2025: Sh90.68 million | Akiira Geothermal: Sh1.97bn invested (2016) + additional stake (2024) against zero electricity produced | Lamu coal project write-off: Sh2 billion | Two Akiira exploratory wells: Sh1.2 billion, failed to meet production capacity | Longhorn Publishers FY2025 loss: Sh261.44 million | Longhorn FY2025 revenue decline: 56%
THE SHARE PRICE: THE UNIMPEACHABLE VERDICT
Capital markets are the most honest long-run appraisers of management performance. Centum’s share price has delivered a judgment that no annual report narrative can overturn. The stock reached its all-time high of Sh31.50 on December 9, 2019, almost precisely at the moment the Almasi and Nairobi Bottlers divestment to Coca-Cola completed. The market was registering its last cheer before realising what had been sold and, more critically, what had been retained.
From that peak, the stock entered one of the most prolonged declines in the history of large-cap investment companies on the Nairobi Securities Exchange.
By May 22, 2023, it had hit an all-time low of Sh7.60, a collapse of 75.9 percent from the 2019 high in less than four years. Shareholders who bought at the peak have lost more than three-quarters of their investment.
The stock currently trades at approximately Sh15, meaning it remains more than 52 percent below its all-time high. The market is not predicting a recovery. It is pricing in the portfolio that Mworia built.
The dividend trajectory confirms the same story. In 2019, Centum paid Sh1.20 per share to shareholders. By 2021, the dividend had fallen to Sh0.33 per share.
In 2024, in a year the company reported returning to profit partly because of Two Rivers SEZ property revaluations, the dividend was Sh0.32 per share, a 73 percent collapse from 2019 levels.
Net asset value per share fell from Sh62.10 to Sh54.00 in the single financial year ended March 2023. That is not a macroeconomic accident. It is the direct consequence of capital allocation decisions made at the top.
They have destroyed shareholder value since Chris Kirubi left. Nothing tangible is left.
THE BUYBACK: A COSMETIC SUBSTITUTE FOR RETURNS
In February 2023, Centum shareholders approved a Sh600.8 million share buyback programme, authorising the company to repurchase up to 66.5 million shares over 18 months.
By August 2024, the company had bought back 9.76 million shares. The buyback is dressed as a reward to shareholders, but the market has not been fooled. A buyback at distressed prices, funded by proceeds that should have been distributed as dividends, is not a reward.
It is a mechanism to support a share price that has collapsed because the underlying portfolio is producing losses. Shareholders who needed liquidity could not benefit from a buyback; they needed cash in their hands.
The conventional corporate response when a major asset divestment closes is a special dividend. Investors expect it. The market prices it in.
When the Sidian sale was confirmed on Friday, there was no share price rally. There was fury. Because shareholders have absorbed years of write-downs and annual losses, and the carrying value at which the Sidian stake sat in Centum’s books, Sh1.1 billion, was already considered by the market to be at or above the likely disposal price. The “modest gain” Centum described leaves almost no residual capital to distribute. The market already knew.
The broader question shareholders are now demanding be answered is whether the Sidian proceeds, whatever their quantum, will be returned via a special dividend or recycled into the same loss-making portfolio.
Mworia’s track record on this front is not reassuring. Proceeds from the beverage sales in 2019 went toward debt repayment and project funding. Proceeds from GenAfrica and Platinum Credit were reinvested.
There has been no special dividend in the modern era of Centum. Each exit has been followed by a fresh commitment of capital to long-dated development projects that have consistently underdelivered.
THE KIRUBI QUESTION: AN INHERITANCE MISMANAGED
Chris Kirubi.
The late Chris Kirubi, who died in June 2021 and whose estate remains the beneficial controlling shareholder at approximately 30.94 percent, was the architect of Centum’s diversified portfolio model. Kirubi understood that a holding company’s legitimacy rests on the quality and durability of its underlying businesses.
He assembled a portfolio spanning beverages, insurance, financial services and publishing that threw off consistent cash flows across economic cycles. He understood the difference between a business worth holding and a project worth speculating on.
Under Mworia, that philosophy has been inverted. The businesses that generated the cash flows have been sold. The projects that absorb the cash flows have been built.
A Sh25 billion real estate complex that required an Sh8 billion development loan and has since spawned billions in impairments and annual operating losses. A geothermal project that has consumed nearly Sh4 billion in committed capital and produced no electricity. A coal power plant written to zero. A publisher so damaged it has technically negative equity. An SEZ burning through more than Sh1 billion annually in losses.
Mworia’s stated defence of this strategy is that Centum is not a passive holding company but an active value creator that enters businesses, creates value and exits at a premium. This is a coherent argument for a private equity fund with a 10-year fund life and institutional limited partners who understand the model.
It is a catastrophic model for a listed investment company whose shareholders include retail investors who bought shares expecting dividend income and price appreciation, and who have received neither for six years. The 36,000 shareholders of Centum are not limited partners in a closed-end fund. They cannot redeem their capital except by selling on the secondary market at prices that reflect the wreckage beneath.
There is also a less visible dimension to this story. Multiple market observers who have tracked Centum’s evolution note an exodus of senior investment professionals from the company since Kirubi’s influence waned.
The institutional knowledge that identified Carbacid at Sh400 million and sold it for Sh1.2 billion, that bought into UAP when it was a regional insurer and exited with Sh5.5 billion, has largely departed. What remains is a management culture oriented toward project development and real estate, domains where capital is patient and illiquid, rather than the disciplined exit-focused private equity model that built Centum’s original reputation.
WHAT SHAREHOLDERS ARE OWED
The Sidian Bank exit proceeds, undisclosed in quantum at the time of going to press, are now sitting at the company level.
The market consensus, expressed with unusual force by analysts and shareholders across every platform monitoring CTUM, is unambiguous: those proceeds must be distributed as a special dividend. Not reinvested in Longhorn Publishers, which has negative equity on a standalone basis.
Not added to Akiira Geothermal, a project that has now absorbed billions over nearly a decade without producing electricity. Not channelled into the Two Rivers SEZ, which lost Sh584.5 million in six months. Distributed. Returned. To the 36,000 shareholders who have watched their investment halve over six years while being told that transformation is underway.
The Centum board faces the most serious credibility test in its 59-year history.
The Centum 5.0 strategy, built around value optimisation and sustained portfolio performance, has delivered three consecutive years of consolidated group losses at the last full-year audit.
Net asset value per share has declined. The share price is at less than half its peak. The businesses sold were all profitable. The businesses retained are all loss-making. The dividend has been cut by 73 percent. The buyback programme has done nothing to arrest the share price decline.
From a pure investment standpoint, the current Centum portfolio is structurally challenged in ways that a single asset sale cannot remedy. Real estate in Kenya is illiquid and oversupplied in the commercial segment.
Akiira is a long-dated greenfield energy project with no commissioned output and a track record of failed wells. Longhorn is a distressed publisher in a government-dictated curriculum environment. The TRIFIC SEZ is an unproven concept in a market where industrial zones have historically struggled to attract anchor tenants at the pace required to service the development debt.
The one genuine bright spot is Nabo Capital’s management of Centum’s marketable securities portfolio, which returned 13 percent in FY2024 and outperformed major regional indices. But a well-run liquid securities book cannot indefinitely subsidise billions in real estate impairments and geothermal write-downs.
The Sidian proceeds represent the last meaningful pool of clean liquidity Centum will generate before the company is entirely dependent on long-dated development assets to monetise its portfolio.
That liquidity belongs to the shareholders who have waited, and suffered, through six years of this strategy. The market has rendered its verdict on the NSE’s secondary screen.
The question now is whether James Mworia and the Centum board are listening, or whether the proceeds from Sidian Bank will quietly disappear into the next development project on the pipeline.
A Nairobi court has issued warrant of arrest against two businessmen for failing to appear in court to plead to fraud charges.
Milimani Principal Magistrate Teressia Nyangena issued arrest warrant against Mohamed Annour Sadate and Gilbert Omollo Orwe alias David Gweth after they failed to appear in court to answer to charges related to gold fraud.
Magistrate Nyangena rejected an application by a lawyer representing one of the suspects, who claimed that they were ambushed with the case and that his client was unwell.
Sadate and Orwe are accused of committing the offence on diverse dates between 6 April and 30 June 2022 in Nairobi City County.
It is further alleged that they committed the fraud jointly with others not before court, with intent to defraud and allegedly obtained USD 101,400 from Sardar Mohamad Tabraiz by falsely pretending that they were in a position to sell to him 2,000kgs of gold.
The charge sheet registered in court stated that they allegedly forged a rejection letter for export purporting it to be a valid and genuine document issued by Kenya Revenue Authority.
It is alleged that they forged the document on or before 7 day of march 2022 at an unknown place and time within the country, Orwe jointly in the country.
Orwe is also accused of making a certificate of origin No. 8796, purporting it to be a valid and genuine document issued by East African Community Customs COMESA, without lawful authority.
The document, passed as genuine, was meant to defraud Tabraiz.
NAIROBI, Kenya Mar 13 – More than 5,500 Kenyans have signed up to join the Linda Mwananchi movement shortly after Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna launched its official website on Friday.
The Nairobi Senator unveiled the online platform on March 13, urging supporters to register and connect with the movement through its website and social media platforms.
According to information shared by the organisers, thousands of supporters had already followed the movement across Facebook, X, TikTok and Instagram within hours of the launch.
Last month,Sifuna insisted on a Linda Mwananchi census in the quest to send President William Ruto home saying it will only succeed if it is backed by clear numbers, proper planning and a strong grassroots structure.
Sifuna said members of the Linda Mwananchi movement have consistently told supporters, including at rallies in Kakamega, that they can remove President Ruto from office. However, he stressed that certain steps must come first which include knowing the actual figures or building the systems needed to organise them.
Those seeking to join the initiative are required to complete a brief registration process on the website, which includes confirming their voter registration status. Registrants are also asked to pay a Ksh10 fee, a step the organisers say is intended to filter out automated or fake accounts.
During the sign-up process, a message explains that the small fee is meant to help the movement verify genuine supporters and determine its actual membership numbers.
Once the payment is completed, new members receive a confirmation message welcoming them to the movement.
The website also outlines several ways supporters can participate, including volunteering their time or making donations starting from as little as Ksh10 to support the initiative’s activities.
Organisers say the funds will help sustain the campaign as it mobilises supporters across the country.
In addition, the platform features an events calendar where members can track upcoming meetings and rallies organised by the movement.
The next gathering is scheduled to take place in Mombasa County on March 22.
The group has also announced plans to convene a delegates’ convention later in the month dubbed “The People’s NDC,” which is expected to outline the movement’s next political steps.
Last week,the Linda Mwananchi faction of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party rejected a plan to register the caucus’ movement name as a political party.
The Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna-led faction says it has not approved any plan or authorised any person to register the Linda Mwananchi party following an application to the Office of Registrar of Political Parties (ORPP).
Already, the faction has written to the ORPP seeking to block the attempt by an individual identified as Charles Wanyonyi, citing the likelihood of infringement of images and symbols associated with the caucus.
The group says it has not approved the use of the slogan “Linda Mwananchi,” arguing that if registered, it will provide an avenue for the public to be conned.
“The political party is likely to use our clients’ names, images, and goodwill to fraudulently get financing either from members of the public or other entities,” the faction stated through lawyer Duncan Anzala of Henia Anzala & Associates.
The faction informed the ORPP that they were apprehensive over the plan to register the party after reading about the move in one of the dailies.
“In view of the foregoing, our clients urge your office to shun upon and thwart the attempt to defraud Kenyans through political conmanship by declining the application to register “Linda Mwananchi” as a political party,” the letter received at the ORPP on March 4, 2026 states.
Mojtaba Khamenei injured, not seen publicly since strikes
Iran denies US terrorism allegations, calls them baseless
March 13 (Reuters) – The United States is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information about senior Iranian military and intelligence officials, including its new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei.
The reward targets 10 officials associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), according to the State Department website. The military force, created after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, is loyal to the supreme leader and tasked with protecting the Shi’ite clerical establishment.
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Mojtaba Khamenei recently succeeded his father, Ali Khamenei, as Iran’s supreme leader after the elder Khamenei was killed along with several other top Iranian officials in joint U.S. and Israeli strikes that began on February 28. The younger Khamenei, believed to have been injured in the strikes, hasn’t been seen publicly since, although he released his first statement on Thursday.
In addition to the supreme leader, the U.S. is seeking information about Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani, Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib, Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni and two officials in Khamenei’s office.
Larijani appeared Friday in videos verified by Reuters alongside President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi attending a rally in Tehran, despite an assertion by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that Iran’s leadership was “cowering” underground.
The reward website also lists four other officials, including the IRGC commander and secretary of the defense council, but doesn’t include their names or photos.
“These individuals command and direct various elements of the IRGC, which plans, organizes, and executes terrorism around the world,” the State Department said.
The Revolutionary Guards could not be immediately reached for comment on Friday — the weekly day of rest in Iran. Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The U.S. has designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization, accusing it of being responsible for attacks that have killed U.S. citizens. Washington has also accused Iran of orchestrating assassination plots against President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials in retaliation for the killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020.
Iran denies being a sponsor of terrorism. Iranian officials routinely dismiss U.S. terrorism allegations as baseless political attacks, arguing Washington raises such claims to justify pressure campaigns or sanctions.
There is a moment that will outlive every gazette notice, every ceremonial swearing-in, and every press release that the new National Land Commission will ever issue.
It happened in a committee room in Parliament on the morning of Monday, March 9, 2026, when Dr Abdillahi Saggaf Alawy — President William Ruto’s personal choice to chair the commission that oversees Kenya’s 70-million-acre public land estate — looked at a panel of MPs and said: ‘I am a bit shaky.’
It was not a throwaway admission. It was a diagnosis.
The MPs had stripped away Alawy’s crib sheets. Committee chairman Joash Nyamoko, the North Mugirango MP who chaired the Departmental Committee on Lands, had already ordered the nominee to set aside the notes he was reading from after suspecting that questions had been leaked to him in advance.
Without his prepared script, Alawy could not field basic interrogation about the commission he had been nominated to lead. He sought permission to answer questions one by one because, in his own words, he found it difficult to recall them.
The committee refused. Kaloleni MP Paul Katana asked the question that hung over the entire session: ‘NLC is a huge responsibility. Will he manage the storm?’ Nobody has yet answered it.
The committee gave him a five-minute breather after Bahati MP Irene Njoki proposed it. When he returned, Alawy thanked the committee for its patience and confessed: ‘This is a new environment for me. I am already feeling the weight of NLC on my back. Usually, I am a very composed and listening person.’ It was the most revealing sentence of the entire vetting exercise.
The weight of the NLC — an institution charged with managing public land on behalf of 55 million Kenyans, investigating historical land injustices stretching back to colonial dispossession, and recommending national land policy — was apparently something Alawy encountered for the first time in that committee room. Despite all of this, the committee still recommended his approval. Parliament voted him through. President Ruto gazetted him within 24 hours.
“Are we serious as a country? Are we perpetuating land malpractices in the land sector? What kind of disservice are we doing to this country? It is a sad day.” — Dr Wilberforce Oundo, Funyula MP
TWICE REJECTED, THRICE LUCKY
This is not Alawy’s first parliamentary ordeal. In February 2014, former President Uhuru Kenyatta nominated him for appointment as a member of the National Gender and Equality Commission — a different constitutional body, but the same pattern.
The Labour and Social Welfare Committee, chaired by then Matungu MP David Were, vetted him and concluded bluntly that he was ‘out of touch with gender and equality challenges in Kenya to an extent that he could not identify even one minority group in Kenya.’
The committee found him unsuitable and rejected his nomination outright.
There was a further, more fundamental problem in 2014. The committee found that Alawy had lost his Kenyan citizenship in 2005 when he acquired American citizenship under the old constitution, which did not permit dual nationality.
He was asked to prove that he had lawfully resumed Kenyan citizenship.
The documents he presented — a declaration made the day after his vetting — were ruled ‘irrelevant to his case’ by the committee. He was unable to demonstrate, to the committee’s satisfaction, that due diligence was followed in regaining the citizenship that Article 14(5) of the 2010 Constitution entitles him to reclaim.
The full House overturned the committee’s rejection and Alawy served a six-year term on the gender commission.
His citizenship questions have not disappeared: during his NLC vetting this month, the issue resurfaced, with Alawy confirming he had at some point held American citizenship and had since renounced it.
What the record therefore shows is a man who carries a 12-year paper trail of parliamentary unease about his suitability for constitutional office.
That trail includes a formal rejection by a House committee, a disputed citizenship file, and a vetting performance so poor that even the committee that recommended him recorded in its official report that he was ‘shaky in responding.’ In any functioning meritocracy, this dossier would disqualify a candidate from the chairmanship of a ward development committee, let alone a constitutional commission. In Kenya in March 2026, it was apparently sufficient.
THE CONFLICT THAT PARLIAMENT NOTED AND THEN IGNORED
Perhaps the most explosive dimension of the Alawy nomination is not his academic credentials or his shakiness before MPs. It is what his family has been doing to the people of Wasini Island in Kwale County for the past four decades — and what it means for any community that finds itself in a land dispute with the Saggaf Alawy family while Abdillahi Saggaf Alawy chairs the institution that has jurisdiction over exactly such disputes.
The backstory is long and bitter. Wasini is a five-square-kilometre coral island off Kenya’s southern coast, home to some 1,700 residents who depend on fishing and tourism.
In 1979, the patriarch of the Saggaf Alawy family — Abdulrahman Saggaf Alawy, a former school teacher on the island — began a legal campaign to reclaim communal farmland known as the Puma, which he asserted the family owned by virtue of a 1908 land title ordinance issued during the era of the Sultan of Zanzibar.
What followed was nearly five decades of litigation, government commissions, surveys, injunctions, eviction threats, and community protests that have left the island in a state of perpetual anxiety.
In September 2025 — just five months before Ruto nominated Abdillahi Saggaf Alawy to chair the NLC — the government issued the Saggaf Alawy family a freehold title deed for 610 acres of Wasini Island, representing nearly half the island.
The National Land Commission, the very institution Alawy now chairs, had previously recognised the family as victims of historical injustice. Within weeks of receiving that title, the family issued formal eviction notices to hotel and cottage owners on the island.
Local leaders and residents, many of whom have lived on the land for generations, insist the land is ancestral and communal. MPs from the Coast had previously passed resolutions questioning the survey process and ordering residents to stay put. None of that stopped the eviction machinery.
During his NLC vetting, MPs pressed Alawy on whether he would recuse himself should Wasini Island matters come before the commission. He said he would. But the institutional problem runs deeper than one vote or one recusal.
The Saggaf family’s claim to nearly half of Wasini Island was processed through the NLC. The NLC issued gazette notices affirming their ownership. The NLC’s own historical injustice committee was the vehicle through which the family secured its legal victories.
A man whose family has already benefited from NLC decisions to the tune of Sh3.9 billion in prime coastal land — and who has himself declared a net worth of Sh62 million — is now the chairman of the body that will adjudicate the next generation of such disputes.
The Institute of Surveyors of Kenya and Kituo Cha Sheria both raised this concern in formal memoranda to the vetting committee. The committee noted their concerns in its report. Parliament then voted Alawy through.
“His family is involved in a land dispute in Wasini Island against the locals. Will you be fair to the residents if you are appointed?” — MP Paul Katana
THE CHAIR’S RECORD AT ADC: A DRESS REHEARSAL FOR FAILURE
Alawy’s defenders will point to his academic credentials — a PhD in Agricultural Education from Ohio State University, a background in monitoring and evaluation, decades of work in international development spanning 43 countries.
But credentials on paper and performance in office are different things, and the parliamentary record of his stewardship of the Agricultural Development Corporation is instructive.
Alawy has served as chairman of the ADC board, a state agency that manages some of Kenya’s most strategically important agricultural land, including the 1.7-million-acre Galana Kulalu ranch in Kilifi and Tana River counties.
The Galana Kulalu project is arguably the most catastrophically mismanaged land asset in modern Kenyan history.
The project consumed more than Sh14 billion in public funds while putting fewer than 10,000 of its projected million acres under cultivation. Parliament described it as a ‘spectacular fiasco.’ Under Alawy’s tenure as ADC chairman, 52,000 acres of ADC land were allocated to a cement factory in Mombasa even as landless communities in Tana River continued to wait for resettlement that had been promised since the presidency of Mwai Kibaki. A parliamentary resolution specifically directed that 250,000 acres of ADC land be allocated to landless residents in Tana River. Alawy did not implement it.
MPs during his NLC vetting also raised the matter of a parliamentary fact-finding visit to ADC offices in Tana River County, during which Alawy was reportedly absent.
Legislators described having travelled at taxpayer expense to ADC facilities only to find the ADC chairman unavailable to meet them. This is the man now entrusted with the chairmanship of the constitutional body mandated to manage all public land in Kenya.
THE COMMISSION’S SIX: A GALLERY OF THE UNQUALIFIED
The problem with Kenya’s new NLC is not limited to its chairman.
It is structural. Section 8 of the NLC Act sets a clear threshold: commissioners must hold a degree and have at least 15 years of knowledge and experience in land management and administration, natural resource management, land adjudication, land law, land surveying, spatial planning, land economics, public administration, or related social sciences. The seven nominees Ruto sent to Parliament are, by the assessment of multiple professional bodies, substantially incapable of meeting that statutory bar.
Susan Khakasa Oyatsi, designated vice-chairperson, is an accountant who served for approximately six years in an acting capacity as finance director at the Judiciary.
She has no background in land law, land surveying, spatial planning, or any of the core technical disciplines listed in Section 8.
Even Funyula MP Wilberforce Oundo, the most outspoken critic of the nominees during the House debate, conceded he had no objection to Oyatsi — a diplomatic hedge that nonetheless signals she is the closest thing to a technically defensible appointment in the batch.
Daniel Murithi Muriungi, nominated from Meru County, is described as a property lawyer and aviation practitioner.
Property law has tangential relevance to land administration, but the NLC’s mandate extends to adjudication, historical injustice investigations, compulsory acquisition, national land policy, and the oversight of county land management boards. Aviation practice contributes nothing to that mandate.
Kigen Vincent Cheruiyot, from Kericho County, is a certified human resource professional and former chairman of the National Employment Authority. Human resources is a management discipline. It has no connection to land governance.
Cheruiyot’s appointment to a body whose core technical functions are inherently spatial and legal in character is, on its face, a Section 8 anomaly.
The ISK’s president Eric Nyadimo put it plainly: the NLC’s statutory work involves land survey, valuation, physical planning, environmental management, and land administration. ‘How will the team that has been proposed carry out these core functions when all these matters are alien to them?’ he asked. Nobody answered him.
Mohamed Abdi Haji Mohamed, former Banissa MP, brings a legislative background to the commission. His constituency lies in the pastoral northeast, a region with acute and historically under-served land tenure problems.
Haji’s political experience is not nothing — commissioners who understand community land tensions in arid and semi-arid regions serve a genuine function.
But his is not a technical appointment, and the NLC is, above all else, a technical institution.
Mary Yiane Seneta, former Kajiado County Women Representative, holds a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Nairobi. She was among nominees shortlisted for the Salaries and Remuneration Commission in 2025 and did not make the final cut.
She brings no evident land expertise to an institution that will resolve title disputes, compulsory acquisitions, and resource allocation decisions affecting millions of Kenyans.
Dr Julie Ouma Oseko, from Siaya County, is described as an advocate and senior legal consultant. Of all six commissioners, she comes closest to the legal competencies the NLC requires. Her confirmation of legal standing would depend on the nature of her practice, but at minimum she represents a partial exception to the broader pattern.
“We are populating the commission with Kenyans who have no qualifications at all, as clearly outlined in this Act.” — Dr Wilberforce Oundo, MP, on the floor of the National Assembly
THE PROFESSIONALS WHO WERE PASSED OVER
The Institution of Surveyors of Kenya, the Architectural Association of Kenya, and Kituo Cha Sheria all submitted formal memoranda opposing the nominations before vetting began. ISK president Nyadimo’s public statement raised a question that the selection panel has not answered: was there a scoring system? Qualified land surveyors, spatial planners, land economists, and land lawyers applied for positions on the NLC.
The selection panel, whose proceedings are not transparent to the public, passed them over in favour of a human resources professional, a finance officer, a former MP, and a woman with a degree in education.
Section 8 of the NLC Act was not drafted idly. It was designed by the architects of Kenya’s 2010 constitutional settlement to ensure that the body charged with addressing one of Africa’s most complex inherited land problems — colonial dispossession, adjudication irregularities, historical injustice, compulsory acquisition and compensation — would be staffed by people who understand what they are doing.
The current selection process has produced a commission where the dominant expertise appears to be loyalty.
PARLIAMENT: A SIDESHOW WITH OFFICIAL STATIONERY
The most dispiriting element of this episode is not what the President did. Presidents appoint allies. That is a political constant. The most dispiriting element is what Parliament did. The Departmental Committee on Lands heard the evidence.
MPs questioned Alawy’s citizenship history, his conflict of interest in Wasini Island, his failure at ADC, his inability to answer questions without a cheat sheet, and his visible breakdown under routine interrogation.
The committee chairperson told him on the record that his shakiness would be noted in the official report. It was noted. The committee then recommended his approval.
The full House adopted the report. Parliament discharged its constitutional function of vetting presidential nominees by noting every reason the nominees should be rejected, writing those reasons into its official record, and voting yes.
Oundo, who delivered the most searing indictment of the nominations on the floor of the House, captured the capitulation in a single sentence: ‘I would have easily stood here and said I oppose this motion, but the commission has to run.’ The commission has to run. It is the oldest and most reliable justification for institutional surrender in Kenyan public life. The commission has to run, therefore the unqualified must be confirmed.
The state house has spoken, therefore the oversight mechanism must perform its ritual and stand aside. Leader of Majority Kimani Ichung’wah even attempted to silence Oundo, demanding he substantiate his criticisms or withdraw and apologise. Oundo declined.
He told his colleagues they should have had the courage to return the nominations to the appointing authority. They did not.
The swearing-in of the new NLC commissioners was deferred on the day the gazette notice was published because Chief Justice Martha Koome and Deputy Chief Justice Philomena Mwilu were unavailable. It was, perhaps, an unintentional metaphor.
The republic’s most senior judicial officer was not present to witness the formal installation of the commission that will adjudicate land rights for the next six years.
WHY THIS MATTERS MORE THAN ANY OTHER BAD APPOINTMENT
Kenya is a country in which the word ‘land’ has triggered ethnic conflict, electoral violence, mass displacement, judicial corruption, and political assassination. The National Land Commission is not a decorative constitutional body. It manages public land on behalf of national and county governments. It investigates historical injustices.
It recommends compulsory acquisition of private land for public purpose. It advises on national land policy. It monitors land use planning. Its decisions determine whether communities are settled or evicted, whether infrastructure projects proceed or stall, whether colonial-era grievances are addressed or compounded.
A commission staffed by people who, in the words of the ISK, find the commission’s ‘core functions alien to them’ is not merely an ineffective commission. It is a dangerous one.
And at the head of that commission sits a man whose family has a Sh3.9 billion stake in a land dispute that passed through the very institution he now chairs, who struggled to answer questions without a script, who was rejected by a parliamentary committee twelve years ago, and who told the nation’s elected representatives that he was feeling the weight of the NLC on his back in the room where he was supposed to demonstrate he could carry it.
Ruto has had his skunk. Parliament has accepted delivery. Six years is a long time for an island community to wait.
Section 8 of the National Land Commission Act (Cap. 281) requires that all commissioners hold a degree and possess at least 15 years of knowledge and experience in: public administration, land management and administration, natural resource management, land adjudication and settlement, land law, land surveying, spatial planning, land economics, or social sciences — in addition to satisfying the Chapter Six integrity requirements of the Constitution of Kenya 2010.
Section 5 confers on the commission the mandate to manage public land, recommend national land policy, investigate historical injustices, and monitor land use planning across all 47 counties.
