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On the afternoon of July 24, 2015, Air Force One touched down at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport bearing a president whose father had been born on the shores of Lake Victoria. Barack Obama’s visit to Nairobi was billed as a homecoming, a celebration of ties between the world’s most powerful democracy and one of East Africa’s most strategically vital nations. While the cameras followed the motorcade through the freshly painted streets of the capital and the state house garden glittered for a presidential state dinner, something of considerably less fanfare was happening across town at the level of technocrats and diplomats.

On that same day, Health Cabinet Secretary James Macharia and United States Ambassador to Kenya Robert Godec quietly put pen to paper on a bilateral biosecurity agreement formally titled the Cooperation in Threat Reduction Biological Engagement Programs. The cameras were not there. There was no press conference. Kenyans were not told what had been agreed in their name. More than a decade later, that document sits at the heart of the most explosive public health controversy Kenya has witnessed in recent memory: the attempt by the Trump administration to establish an Ebola quarantine facility for American citizens at Laikipia Air Base in Nanyuki, Laikipia County.

The deal signed in 2015 was not, legally speaking, Barack Obama’s deal with Uhuru Kenyatta. It did not bear either president’s name. But it was conceived, negotiated, and executed during Obama’s tenure as American president and Kenyatta’s first term as Kenya’s fourth president. It emerged from the same diplomatic warmth that characterised the July 2015 summit, in which Kenyatta and Obama signed a raft of agreements covering security, visa reciprocity, and development cooperation. The biosecurity agreement was part of that wave, and like much of what governments agree to in the margins of high-profile summits, it received almost no public scrutiny at the time of its signing.

THE TERMS OF THE 2015 DEAL

What Macharia and Godec signed that day was sweeping in its implications. The agreement gave the United States effective control over any projects that would be generated under it, including the selection of contractors. It exempted imported goods and American workers deployed under the agreement from taxation in Kenya. It contained a mutual liability waiver, meaning that neither Kenya nor the United States could sue the other in the event of death, injury, or property damage arising from any project executed under the framework. In short, Kenya had agreed to absorb both the operational and legal consequences of whatever biological engagement programmes the two countries might undertake together.

The National Assembly ratified the agreement on November 22, 2016, well over a year after it was signed. Kenya was already bound by it before parliamentarians had a chance to scrutinise it. The ratification was, in effect, post-hoc legislative blessing for a deal the executive had already locked in. At the time, there was no particular controversy. The public health context in 2015 was shaped by the tail end of the catastrophic West African Ebola outbreak that had killed more than eleven thousand people and briefly terrified the world. Biosecurity cooperation between governments seemed not only reasonable but urgent. Nobody in the National Assembly chamber that November appears to have anticipated that the agreement’s most consequential clause might one day be invoked not to protect Kenyans from a disease but to bring that disease to their soil.

James Macharia himself would not remain at the Ministry of Health long enough to witness that consequence. He was transferred to the Transport docket in November 2015, just months after signing the agreement, when Kenyatta reshuffled his cabinet. Macharia was an accountant by training, a CPA who had served as a steward of the health ministry rather than as a medical or public health expert. That a document with such profound biosafety implications was signed by a finance professional rather than an epidemiologist or public health authority is, in retrospect, a detail worth noting.

THE DEAL EXTENDED UNDER COVID

Uhuru Kenyatta’s second term produced the COVID-19 pandemic, which transformed the political salience of biosecurity cooperation globally. By 2022, with Kenya still navigating pandemic recovery and seeking external health support, the Kenyatta administration’s then Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe signed a seven-year extension of the 2015 agreement with the United States. His counterpart on the American side was Eric Kneedler, then the US Charge d’Affaires in Nairobi. The extension was signed on April 5, 2022, and it carries the agreement through to April 5, 2029. That date is significant because it means the framework remains operative well into President William Ruto’s second potential term, giving Washington a contractual basis for health cooperation on Kenyan soil that no future Kenyan administration will be able to unilaterally withdraw from without diplomatic consequence until the agreement lapses.

Kagwe was no stranger to high-profile dealings with American officials. In 2021, Kneedler had written a letter to Kagwe informing him that the United States was terminating its medical supply chain relationship with the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority over credible allegations of fraud and corruption identified by USAID’s Office of the Inspector General. The two men navigated that confrontation. A year later, they were extending a biosecurity treaty. The renewal of the agreement received even less public attention than the original signing had. The COVID-19 pandemic had normalised the expansion of emergency health cooperation frameworks, and few questioned the extension at the time.

RUTO SEALS THE ARCHITECTURE

When William Ruto succeeded Uhuru Kenyatta in September 2022, he inherited both the extended biosecurity agreement and the institutional logic embedded within it. His administration then added another layer. In December 2024, Kenya launched a revised national Foreign Policy, the first update to the 2014 document. The policy, presented by Prime Cabinet Secretary and Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi at a ceremony at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre on December 2, 2024, was long on ambition and diplomatic confidence. It added global health diplomacy as a formal pillar of Kenya’s foreign policy for the first time.

Section 4.9.4 of that document, titled Global Health Diplomacy, defined the discipline as an emerging field intersecting public health, international relations, and development. More importantly, it positioned Kenya explicitly as a wellness, humanitarian, and health emergencies medical hub, a declaration that, in the language of international diplomacy, carries specific and consequential meaning. A health emergencies hub is not merely a country with clean hospitals. It is a nation whose territory is available to other countries during health crises, for laboratory testing, for deployment of health workers, and, critically, for the management of health emergencies originating beyond its own borders.

By the time that Foreign Policy document was published, Kenya had already said yes to becoming a quarantine destination before the specific request was formally made. The government had essentially pre-authorised in policy what would later be demanded in practice. The Foreign Policy 2024 also adopted a whole-of-government approach to its implementation, meaning any ministry could operationalise its health diplomacy commitments without requiring fresh parliamentary approval for every individual action taken under the existing framework. It was a legal shortcut whose consequences are now being litigated.

Mudavadi’s ministry had promised to translate the document into Kiswahili and conduct a nationwide sensitisation campaign called Foreign Affairs Mashinani to ensure that ordinary Kenyans understood what the document committed their country to. That process was not complete when the controversy over the Ebola facility erupted. Kenyans are discovering on page 49 of a technical diplomatic document what their country’s position on hosting foreign health emergencies was, and they are discovering it at the same time that American military aircraft are landing at Laikipia Air Base.

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION MOVES

Two weeks after Kenya and the world’s governments formally declared the Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, the Trump administration did something unprecedented. On May 15, 2026, both the DRC and Uganda declared outbreaks of the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, a particularly dangerous variant for which there is currently no licensed vaccine or approved treatment. The World Health Organization elevated the outbreak to its highest global alert level on May 17. By May 28, the outbreak had produced more than 1,200 suspected and confirmed cases and at least 241 deaths, spread across Ituri, North Kivu, and South Kivu provinces in DRC, with confirmed imported cases in Uganda’s capital Kampala.

The Trump administration’s position was stated with uncommon bluntness by Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a Cabinet meeting on May 27: the United States could not and would not allow any cases of Ebola to enter American territory. This was a marked departure from the American approach during the 2014 to 2016 West African outbreak, when several infected American health workers and aid workers were evacuated to US soil for treatment at specialist biocontainment facilities, including the Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. The Trump administration was applying its America First framework with equal force to disease containment, refusing to accept for American soil the biological risk it was prepared to transfer to a partner country.

The partner country chosen was Kenya. On May 27, American officials anonymously confirmed to media that the Trump administration was establishing a quarantine and treatment centre in Kenya, to be built, staffed, and operated entirely by American personnel, for the purpose of receiving Americans exposed to Ebola while working or travelling in the DRC. Senior administration officials subsequently confirmed the facility would be a fifty-bed field hospital at Laikipia Air Base, roughly 125 miles north of Nairobi, capable of expansion to 250 beds if the outbreak’s trajectory demanded it. The unit would be staffed by the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a uniformed medical service under the Department of Health and Human Services. No Kenyan health worker would be involved in treating American patients.

On May 28, Secretary Rubio held a telephone call with President Ruto, in which the two leaders discussed coordinated efforts to secure vital medical supplies for Kenya and strengthen the country’s health preparedness systems. During that call, Rubio announced a US commitment of approximately Ksh1.74 billion to support Kenya’s Ebola preparedness. The same day, Kenya provided written approval for the American plan, granting the US access to land at Laikipia Air Base. Two US Air Force C-17A Globemaster III transport aircraft had already landed at the base by then. One, registration 98-0051, touched down at 11:12 UTC on May 28, tracked via Flightradar24 on a Ramstein-linked mission route consistent with US Air Mobility Command logistics operations. A second aircraft, 03-3115, followed the next day on an RCH152 mission. The quarantine unit was announced to be operational by Friday, May 29.

THE COURT INTERVENES

It was not to open. On May 28, the Katiba Institute, a Nairobi-based constitutional advocacy organisation led by executive director Nora Mbagathi, filed an urgent petition at the High Court challenging the planned facility on constitutional grounds. The petition argued that the proposed arrangement raised grave constitutional concerns regarding the rights to life, health, fair administrative action, public participation, and parliamentary oversight. It warned of grave and imminent risks to public health, contended that the facility was being established in secrecy and unilaterally, and complained that no environmental impact assessments, biosafety evaluations, or parliamentary approvals had been undertaken or disclosed.

High Court Judge Patricia Nyaundi certified the application as urgent and issued sweeping conservatory orders on May 29. The orders restrained the State Law Office and all respondents from establishing, operationalising, facilitating, approving, or permitting any Ebola exposure, quarantine, isolation, or treatment facility in Kenya arising from arrangements with the United States or any foreign government or agency. The court also barred Kenya from admitting, transferring, receiving, or facilitating the entry into Kenya of any person exposed to or infected with the Ebola virus under the disputed framework. The conservatory orders remain in force pending an inter-partes hearing scheduled for June 2, 2026. Katiba Institute promptly wrote to both the US State Department and the US Department of Health and Human Services notifying them of the ruling, stating that the court order constituted a binding judicial directive and that the United States was expected to respect Kenya’s legal and constitutional processes.

The US response came swiftly. The State Department issued a statement saying it was aware of the court action and was in touch with Kenyan authorities, adding that it was optimistic it could resolve the objections. The phrasing was diplomatic and restrained, but it signalled an expectation that the court-ordered halt was a temporary inconvenience rather than a permanent impediment. The facility, the US position implied, was lawful, the agreement was real, and resolution was a matter of process.

THE GOVERNMENT’S SILENCE

The Kenyan government’s handling of the controversy has been notable for its evasion. Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale, who assumed the health docket in March 2025 after a series of cabinet reshuffles, issued a statement that was carefully calibrated to say almost nothing. Any arrangements regarding international health cooperation, the statement read, would be guided by Kenya’s national laws, public health regulations, biosafety and biosecurity standards, and the government’s responsibility to safeguard the health and welfare of Kenyans. It did not confirm the facility existed. It did not deny it. It did not explain when the Americans were expected to begin arriving, why Kenya had been chosen, or by what authority the executive had approved a biosecurity installation on a military base without parliamentary consultation. The Parliamentary Health Committee has since summoned Duale to appear and account for himself.

President Ruto himself has not addressed the matter in a public forum. The State House has issued no statement beyond acknowledging his telephone call with Secretary Rubio. Prime Cabinet Secretary Mudavadi, whose Foreign Policy 2024 document created the legal and rhetorical foundation for Kenya’s role as a health emergencies hub, has similarly stayed silent. The government that designed the architecture for this arrangement has been content to let the architecture speak for itself while declining to defend it publicly.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY

The opposition to the facility has been broad and pointed. Dr Davji Atellah, secretary-general of the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union, has been the most publicly forceful voice against the arrangement. His formulation is simple and rhetorically devastasting: if the twelve-hour medical evacuation flight from the DRC back to Washington is considered too dangerous for American citizens, by what logic is it safe to fly Ebola-exposed individuals into Kenyan airspace and deposit them in Laikipia? The United States has said openly that it cannot and will not allow Ebola to enter its borders. If it is too dangerous for America, the argument runs, it is too dangerous for Kenya. The union threatened a nationwide strike unless the full text of the bilateral agreement was made public within 48 hours. That demand has not been met.

Former Chief Justice David Maraga has called for parliamentary oversight. The Law Society of Kenya has urged the government to decline the American request. Elected representatives from Laikipia County, including Laikipia East MP Mwangi Kiunjuri, his West counterpart Wachira Karani, North’s MP Sarah Korere, and the county Woman Representative Jane Kagiri, issued a joint statement saying they see no logic in Kenya and Laikipia County hosting such a facility. Laikipia Governor Joshua Irungu went further, pledging that the county’s residents and leadership would do everything in their power to ensure no Ebola quarantine facility was established in the area.

From within the American public health establishment, there is parallel scepticism about the medical logic of the arrangement. For decades, the clinical consensus on haemorrhagic fever management has been that patients should be moved as little as possible, because transit in a deteriorating condition increases both the risk of death and the risk of transmission. Dr Ali Khan, the public health college dean at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and a veteran of American international Ebola responses, has noted that any such facility must provide care equivalent to specialist American biocontainment centres. That standard, maintained at great cost in facilities like the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit and Emory’s serious communicable diseases unit, would be exceptionally difficult to replicate at a temporary field hospital at an Air Force base in the Kenyan highlands.

THE LEGAL ARCHITECTURE AND ITS GAPS

The chain of agreements that produced the current confrontation represents a decade of incremental legal commitments, each building on the last, none of which was individually subjected to meaningful public debate. The 2015 agreement between Macharia and Godec was the foundation. The 2022 extension between Kagwe and Kneedler deepened it. The 2024 Foreign Policy created the ideological framework. The December 4, 2025 Health Cooperation Framework, signed by Mudavadi and Rubio at the State Department in Washington with President Ruto present as a witness, was the capstone. Under that agreement, Kenya became the first country in the world to enter a government-to-government health partnership under the Trump administration’s America First Global Health Strategy. The United States committed to providing $1.6 billion to Kenya’s health system over five years, with Kenya pledging to increase its own domestic health spending by $850 million over the same period. The funds would flow directly to government institutions, bypassing NGOs entirely.

What Katiba Institute’s petition has exposed is that the agreement chain, however legally constructed, may have bypassed constitutional requirements for public participation, parliamentary oversight, and environmental assessment. The court is being asked not to determine whether biosecurity cooperation between Kenya and the United States is inherently unlawful, but whether this specific arrangement, executed in this specific manner, with this specific degree of secrecy, respects the constitutional rights of Kenyan citizens. The distinction matters. A yes from the court would not vindicate the government’s opacity. A no would not necessarily invalidate all existing health cooperation frameworks. But either answer will define how far a Kenyan executive can commit national territory to foreign health operations without democratic accountability.

The liability waiver embedded in the 2015 agreement is one of the more disturbing provisions now attracting scrutiny. By agreeing that neither country could sue the other in the event of death, injury, or property damage arising from projects under the agreement, Kenya effectively capped its legal recourse in the event of an incident at the Laikipia facility. If an American patient deteriorates, escapes containment, or causes a localised exposure that harms Kenyan civilians or military personnel at the base, the legal remedies available to those Kenyans are severely constrained by a contract their government signed in 2015 and extended in 2022, without ever asking them if they agreed.

A DECADE IN THE MAKING

In the end, what is playing out at Laikipia Air Base is not simply a story about Donald Trump’s America First health policy or William Ruto’s transactional relationship with Washington. It is a story about a decision made in 2015 during a summit of maximum diplomatic goodwill, when a Kenyan health minister and an American ambassador signed a document whose full implications neither country chose to explain to its citizens, and which has been quietly extended and expanded in the decade since.

Obama came to Nairobi in July 2015 to host the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, the first time that summit had been held on African soil. He spoke of Kenya being on the move. He danced the Lipala at the State House dinner. He shook hands with Kenyatta before a guard of honour in the late afternoon sun. And on the day he arrived, a biosecurity agreement was signed that gave the United States of America the right to build laboratories and isolation facilities on Kenyan territory for diseases classified as biological threats, with tax exemptions for American personnel and immunity from Kenyan civil suits. That document, ratified by the National Assembly fourteen months later, is what Marco Rubio’s State Department reached for in May 2026 when it decided that Kenya, not America, would bear the risk of Ebola exposure for American citizens fleeing the DRC.

Kenya’s High Court has now pressed pause. The next hearing is June 2. Whether the pause becomes a full stop will depend on whether the court finds that the government’s legal architecture, however elaborately constructed, met the constitutional minimum that the people of Kenya be consulted before their country became a quarantine colony for a lethal virus their government had nothing to do with creating. That question, eleven years after the first agreement was quietly signed in the shadow of a historic homecoming visit, is finally being asked in public.

What began as a frustrating search for a stolen phone ended in a dramatic police operation that exposed what detectives now believe could be part of a wider network dealing in stolen mobile devices within Nairobi’s Central Business District.

The breakthrough came after a woman whose phone had been stolen at a school along Ngong Road stumbled upon a social media advertisement that made her stop scrolling instantly.

The handset being advertised looked exactly like her missing phone.

Suspicious and convinced she had found a crucial lead, she reported the matter to police officers, setting off a fast-moving investigation that would eventually lead detectives deep into the bustling heart of Nairobi’s CBD.

Using mobile tracking technology and intelligence gathered from the online advert, officers traced the device to a commercial building near Khoja Stage.

What they found inside shocked even seasoned investigators.

The complainant’s phone was recovered alongside 21 other high-end mobile phones believed to have been stolen from unsuspecting victims across the city. Two suspects found inside the premises were immediately arrested as detectives launched further investigations into what appears to be a thriving underground trade in stolen electronics.

Police suspect the recovered phones may be linked to a broader criminal network that has increasingly turned Nairobi’s downtown business district into a hub for the resale, alteration and movement of stolen gadgets.

The latest recovery mirrors several recent crackdowns that have exposed the scale of the problem.

Earlier this year, detectives recovered more than 900 stolen mobile phones destined for Uganda after intercepting suspicious packages in Nairobi’s CBD. Investigators said the devices were part of an organised cross-border syndicate that stole phones from members of the public and mobile phone shops before smuggling them into neighbouring countries for resale. (DCI (https://www.dci.go.ke/suspects-arrested-over-900-stolen-mobile-phones-recovered-nairobi-cbd?utm_source=chatgpt.com))

In another operation, police arrested suspects allegedly involved in tampering with phone IMEI numbers to conceal the origin of stolen devices. Officers recovered dozens of smartphones, computers and flashing equipment used to alter handset identities before resale. (National Police Service (https://nationalpolice.go.ke/phone-heist-ring-busted-nairobi-cbd-dozens-stolen-devices-recovered?utm_source=chatgpt.com))

Security experts say social media marketplaces have increasingly become a preferred channel for criminals seeking quick buyers for stolen gadgets. Many unsuspecting customers are lured by unusually low prices without verifying the source of the devices.

Investigations into previous cases have revealed that stolen phones are often moved rapidly between handlers, flashed to erase identifying information, or transported across borders within days of being stolen. (The Star (https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2026-01-26-2-arrested-900-stolen-phones-recovered-in-cbd?utm_source=chatgpt.com))

For the woman whose stolen phone triggered the latest operation, a chance encounter with an online advert became the breakthrough detectives needed.

What looked like a routine theft report quickly snowballed into the recovery of 22 mobile phones and the disruption of what police believe may be a larger criminal operation operating behind the busy storefronts and crowded corridors of Nairobi’s CBD.

The two suspects remain in custody as detectives work to establish the ownership of the recovered devices and trace possible links to other phone theft syndicates.

Police have urged members of the public to remain vigilant when purchasing second-hand phones online and to report suspicious electronic dealers or unusually cheap devices.

For now, one careless online advert has done what countless investigations often struggle to achieve.

It led detectives straight to the door.

Busia Senator Okiya Omtatah has filed a petition before the Judicial Service Commission seeking the removal of Court of Appeal judges Justice Luka Kimaru, Justice Sila Munyao and Justice J. O. Okello over their handling of a case involving the controversial Kenya-United States Health Cooperation Framework.

The petition, filed under Article 168 of the Constitution, accuses the judges of violating constitutional principles after they suspended High Court conservatory orders blocking implementation of the agreement while postponing their detailed reasons until October 30, 2026.

Omtatah argues that the move has effectively denied him a meaningful opportunity to appeal to the Supreme Court because he cannot challenge a ruling whose legal reasoning has not yet been provided.

The Kenya-US Health Cooperation Framework was signed in Washington, D.C. on December 4, 2025, in the presence of President William Ruto. The agreement was signed by Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and commits approximately Sh206 billion in US health funding to Kenya over five years.

Omtatah challenged the agreement in the High Court through Constitutional Petition No. E816 of 2025, arguing that it was concluded without parliamentary ratification, lacked adequate public participation, and could expose sensitive Kenyan health data to foreign access. He also claimed some provisions would grant US authorities excessive oversight powers over Kenyan health systems and supply chains.

On December 19, 2025, Justice Bahati Mwamuye issued conservatory orders suspending implementation of the framework pending hearing of the petition, finding that the case raised substantial constitutional issues.

The matter was later consolidated with a related petition filed by the Consumer Federation of Kenya before Justice Patricia Nyaundi.

The government subsequently moved to the Court of Appeal seeking to lift the suspension orders. Attorney General Dorcas Oduor argued that delaying the agreement threatened critical healthcare programmes and funding.

On May 12, 2026, the appellate bench granted an interim stay allowing implementation of the framework to resume. However, the judges stated that their detailed reasons would only be delivered on October 30, 2026.

In his petition to the JSC, Omtatah argues that the delayed reasoning undermines Article 163(4)(a) of the Constitution, which guarantees appeals to the Supreme Court in constitutional matters. He contends that without a reasoned judgment, it is impossible to properly challenge the ruling or for the Supreme Court to determine whether constitutional errors occurred.

The dispute has gained further significance following reports that the United States is seeking to establish a 50-bed Ebola quarantine facility at Laikipia Airbase as part of regional outbreak preparedness efforts.

The proposed facility emerged amid an Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo involving the Bundibugyo strain, which has spread into Uganda. Kenya has not reported any confirmed Ebola cases.

Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale confirmed that Kenya was engaging the United States on preparedness measures linked to emerging public health threats.

The proposal triggered sharp criticism from the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union. Secretary-General Davji Atellah accused the government of turning Kenya into a “containment colony” for foreign health emergencies and threatened industrial action unless details of the arrangement were disclosed.

The Law Society of Kenya also questioned why Kenya had been selected despite having no active Ebola cases, while former Chief Justice David Maraga called for parliamentary scrutiny of the arrangement.

On Friday, Justice Nyaundi issued conservatory orders blocking the establishment or operation of the proposed facility after the Katiba Institute filed an urgent petition challenging the plan.

The petition argues that the arrangement could transform Kenya into an offshore quarantine centre for foreign states without parliamentary approval or public participation.

Omtatah now argues that the unfolding Ebola facility dispute demonstrates the urgency of the constitutional questions raised in the health framework case. He says the delayed Court of Appeal ruling could allow irreversible actions, including infrastructure development, financial commitments, and data-sharing arrangements, before the judiciary fully determines the legality of the agreement.

The Judicial Service Commission is expected to determine whether the judges’ conduct amounts to a constitutional violation or falls within acceptable judicial discretion. The judges have not publicly responded to the allegations.

The consolidated High Court petitions challenging the Kenya-US Health Cooperation Framework are scheduled for mention on June 24, 2026.

Fresh details have emerged in the tragic Utumishi Girls Senior Secondary School fire in Gilgil after Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba revealed that two teachers had been warned in advance about a planned unrest by a section of students but allegedly failed to take action.

The revelations came as investigations into the deadly inferno intensified, with detectives now treating the incident as a suspected arson attack that left 16 students dead and dozens injured.

In a statement issued Friday, Ogamba said preliminary findings indicate that some Form Three learners had discussed plans for unrest before the fire broke out at the Meline Waithera Dormitory.

According to the CS, two teachers were informed of the brewing situation but did not take appropriate preventive measures.

“Preliminary investigations have established that the tragic fire was an act of arson,” Ogamba said, adding that the government would pursue both disciplinary and criminal accountability if negligence is established.

The Directorate of Criminal Investigations has already arrested eight students identified as persons of interest in the case. The learners are currently being questioned as investigators seek to determine their individual roles in the planning and execution of the fire.

Authorities say those found culpable will face charges under the Penal Code and other applicable laws.

The fire, one of the deadliest school tragedies in recent years, tore through the upper floor of the two-storey dormitory, trapping students inside during the night.

Investigators from the DCI’s multi-agency team said the ground floor remained largely intact while the upper section suffered extensive damage. The dormitory reportedly contained twelve cubicles fitted with 135 double-decker beds, raising fresh concerns about overcrowding and compliance with school safety regulations.

Officials now believe the dormitory’s congested layout may have worsened the disaster and slowed evacuation efforts.

Ogamba further disclosed that preliminary findings had uncovered serious safety breaches at the school, including a locked exit door, a violation of the Ministry of Education’s School Safety Manual and Basic Education Regulations.

“In particular, there was congestion in the dormitory, and one exit door was locked, contrary to the prescribed safety requirements,” the CS said.

The revelation has intensified scrutiny on school administrators and education officials over possible lapses in duty of care.

The government says investigations are now extending beyond the students suspected of arson to include teachers, school administrators, Ministry of Education officers and officials from the Teachers Service Commission.

Ogamba warned that disciplinary and legal action would be taken against any public officers found to have ignored warning signs or failed to enforce safety standards.

The tragedy left 79 learners injured, with seven currently receiving specialised treatment at Kenyatta National Hospital after being transferred from Nakuru on Thursday. The remaining students were treated and discharged.

Meanwhile, the bodies of the 16 deceased learners were moved to the Naivasha Sub-County Hospital mortuary, where DNA identification is ongoing due to the condition of some of the remains.

Parents and guardians have been asked to report to the facility to assist with identification procedures.

Detectives processing the scene say forensic experts are examining burn patterns, electrical systems and structural damage to determine how the fire spread so rapidly across the upper floor.

Crime Scene Investigators, forensic imaging experts, DNA analysts and intelligence officers are all involved in the inquiry.

Investigators are also reviewing CCTV footage from within the school and interviewing students, teachers and other witnesses in an effort to reconstruct the final hours before the blaze erupted.

The National Police Service said the investigation would be conducted professionally and independently to ensure justice for the victims and their families.

The Utumishi Girls tragedy has once again reignited national debate over safety standards in Kenyan boarding schools, particularly following repeated incidents of dormitory fires linked to student unrest.

Education stakeholders are now demanding tougher enforcement of school safety regulations, improved mental health support for learners and stronger oversight of boarding facilities across the country.

As grieving families await answers, pressure is mounting on authorities to establish whether the deaths could have been prevented had the warnings been acted upon in time.

NAIROBI, May 29 (Reuters) – A Kenyan court has ordered the temporary suspension of ​a plan for the United States to set up an Ebola quarantine facility in the country after a lawsuit argued the ‌site could endanger public health.

Senior U.S. officials said the 50-bed unit at an air force base in central Kenya would serve Americans who have been exposed to the virus but are still asymptomatic and would become operational on Friday.

Patients who develop symptoms would be sent for care in other countries outside the U.S., the officials said.

The ​plan to bring in Americans exposed to the outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and Ugandahas drawn sharp opposition among ​many Kenyans since it came to light earlier this week. Kenya’s government provided written approval for the plan ⁠on Thursday but has not directly addressed it in public comments.

In an order late on Thursday, Kenyan High Court Judge Patricia Nyaundi barred the ​government from admitting anyone exposed to or infected by Ebola under the planned agreement until a challenge brought by the Katiba Institute legal advocacy ​group was resolved.

The next hearing will take place on June 2, Nyaundi said.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ‘WILL NOT ALLOW’ EBOLA PATIENTS ON US SOIL

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has said it “cannot and will not allow” any cases of Ebola to enter the country, unlike during the 2014 to 2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa when several infected U.S. ​nationals were treated on U.S. soil.

The planned facility in Kenya is due to be staffed by members of the U.S. Public Health Service, a ​uniformed branch of the Department of Health and Human Services. More than 30 trained in Washington for three days and left for Kenya on Wednesday night, U.S. ‌officials said.

Kenya ⁠has pushed for the facility to be open to all nationalities, not just U.S. citizens, but it is not clear if that will be the case. The U.S. State Department said on Thursday it would commit $13.5 million toward Kenya’s Ebola preparedness efforts.

Since the outbreak was confirmed in mid-May, there have been more than 1,000 suspected and confirmed cases, including 246 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

Health experts have warned that the real number ​of cases and deaths is likely ​to be much higher because ⁠of the late detection of the outbreak and difficulties tracing the contacts of suspected cases in eastern DRC, where there is widespread armed conflict.

QUARANTINE PLAN CRITICISED IN KENYA

The Katiba Institute said in its lawsuit that the ​quarantine plan “raises grave constitutional concerns regarding the rights to life, health, fair administrative action, public participation, and parliamentary ​oversight”.

Kenya’s main medical ⁠union also threatened on Thursday to initiate industrial action unless the terms of the agreement with the U.S. government were released within 48 hours.

Some U.S. health experts, meanwhile, have criticised the plan, saying it could discourage Americans from joining the Ebola response.

The Trump administration has said the plan will allow patients ⁠to more ​quickly access care and will protect Americans at home.

Last week, a U.S. citizen who ​was treating patients in the DRC as a medical missionary was confirmed to have contracted Ebola and moved to Germany for treatment along with five others who were exposed. A ​seventh person was taken to the Czech Republic.

When President William Ruto reshuffled his principal secretaries on Thursday, the move was dressed in the clinical language of continuity and administration. A vacancy had arisen in the State Department for Petroleum. Someone had to fill it. The man chosen was Kello Harsama. To the casual observer, the appointment may have read like unremarkable bureaucratic rotation. To those who have been tracking the man’s career, it was anything but.

Harsama arrives at the Petroleum docket carrying baggage that, in a functioning accountability ecosystem, would have disqualified him from consideration. Over the course of his tenure as Principal Secretary for Arid and Semi-Arid Lands, he became the subject of extensive and detailed allegations of procurement fraud, regional favouritism, supplier coercion, and the politically motivated misuse of humanitarian resources. None of those allegations have been resolved. No investigation has been announced. No charges have been preferred. No parliamentary committee has tabled findings. And now, instead of a summons from the EACC or the DCI, Harsama has received a promotion.

None of the allegations against Harsama have been resolved. No investigation announced. No charges preferred. And now, instead of a summons from the EACC or the DCI, he has received a promotion.

THE MAN AND HIS RECORD

Harsama’s biography is that of a career administrator who rose steadily through Kenya’s provincial administration ranks. He served as District Officer across Meru, Makueni, Narok, Laikipia, Uasin Gishu, West Pokot, and Baringo. He served as District Commissioner in Kajiado and Loitoktok, later rising to County Commissioner in Kajiado. He holds a Bachelor of Education from Moi University and a Master’s degree in Public Administration and Policy from Tsinghua University in Beijing. On paper, it is a solid CV.

But the architecture of Harsama’s public career reveals something more complicated: a pattern of appointments in sensitive, resource-heavy dockets followed by controversy. President Ruto first appointed him as Principal Secretary for Crops Development under the Ministry of Agriculture before reassigning him to the ASAL department. It was in the ASAL docket that the most serious questions about him emerged and festered.

THE ASAL FOOD CARTEL: ALLEGATIONS THAT WERE NEVER INVESTIGATED

In April 2025, Kenya Insights first published allegations from sources within the Ministry of East African Community, ASAL, and Regional Development pointing to systematic corruption in the distribution of government relief food. The allegations were specific, granular, and damning. Suppliers seeking contracts to provide basic food commodities to drought-affected communities across Kenya’s 23 ASAL counties were being forced to quote inflated prices for staples including beans and rice. The excess over the market rate was, according to ministry insiders, being extracted as kickbacks flowing upward to senior officials.

The central figure named in those accounts was Harsama himself. Sources alleged that over 80 percent of relief food contracts under his watch had been awarded to suppliers from his home county of Marsabit, in a pattern that investigators would recognise as procurement gerrymandering designed to consolidate political capital ahead of his anticipated 2027 gubernatorial bid. Harsama lost to incumbent Governor Mohamud Ali in 2022, coming a distant third. He has since made little secret of his intention to try again, with the Warsiitu clan of the Borana community formally endorsing him in July 2025.

The political calculus behind the alleged contract allocation was therefore not subtle: use the levers of a humanitarian procurement function to build a supplier constituency in Marsabit, and use government resources to fund the political groundwork. Relief food, in this construction, was not aid. It was currency. Contractors who refused to participate in the alleged kickback scheme were simply frozen out of government tenders. The procurement process, meant to be competitive and transparent, was allegedly weaponised into an extortion mechanism. Pay up or lose the contract. The drought-stricken communities waiting for the food were incidental to the arrangement.

Relief food was not aid. It was currency. Pay up or lose the contract. The drought-stricken communities waiting for the food were incidental to the arrangement.

The ASAL department manages an annual Treasury allocation estimated at Sh7.4 billion for relief food and non-food items, supplemented by donations from countries, embassies, and institutions including USAID through the World Food Programme. Even a modest directional bias in procurement at that scale represents hundreds of millions of shillings over a year. The 23 ASAL counties, including Turkana, Mandera, Wajir, Marsabit, and West Pokot, depend on this distribution during recurring drought periods. Any manipulation of the supply chain is not administrative misconduct. It is a crime against already desperate populations.

The Standard gave Harsama the opportunity to respond when these allegations first surfaced. His response was remarkable for what it lacked. He dismissed the claims as political, telling the newspaper that everything he had been told was a lie, that it was politics used by opponents to soil his good reputation. He offered no procurement figures. No audits. No alternative explanation for the alleged regional concentration of contracts. His only substantive defence on the Marsabit allegation was demographic: Marsabit is categorised as one of the 23 ASAL counties and qualifies for relief food. This is technically accurate. It does not explain why, if the allegations are true, Marsabit suppliers were receiving a disproportionate share of contracts bearing no relationship to any formula based on population, drought severity, or humanitarian need.

THE CS-PS RIFT AND THE PRESIDENTIAL RESTRUCTURING

The corruption allegations did not come only from anonymous sources. According to reporting published by Kenya Insights in June 2025, Cabinet Secretary Beatrice Askul had herself uncovered evidence of irregularities in the relief food distribution system and began pushing internally for accountability measures. This produced an open conflict between the CS and her own PS, a deeply unusual breakdown that could only have been visible to the Office of the President. The ministry’s leadership was at war over the question of whether to tolerate or confront apparent corruption in its own procurement chain.

Around the same time, President Ruto issued Executive Order No. 1 of 2025, which restructured government ministries and transferred the Special Programmes function away from the EAC and ASAL ministry to the Ministry of Public Service. The timing attracted immediate analysis from governance observers who read it as a deliberate, if quiet, way of stripping Harsama of the procurement function at the centre of the allegations, without publicly acknowledging the scandal that made the stripping necessary. One source close to the presidency described it to Kenya Insights as a corruption probe conducted through the back door of bureaucratic reorganisation.

Harsama reportedly lobbied furiously against the executive order. Sources told People Daily and Kenya Insights that he visited political leaders, including ODM leader Raila Odinga, using financial resources to influence the reversal of the decision. If accurate, this was an extraordinary act: a sitting principal secretary deploying what may have been public resources to reverse a presidential directive that had stripped him of the very function he was accused of looting. The Presidency did not investigate the lobbying. It moved Harsama sideways, left the allegations hanging, and called the matter closed.

INTO THE PETROLEUM SCANDAL’S WAKE

The docket that Harsama now inherits is itself still smouldering from the most damaging procurement scandal in the energy sector in years. His predecessor, Mohamed Liban, resigned in April 2026 alongside KPC Managing Director Joe Sang and EPRA Director-General Daniel Kiptoo, all three implicated in a Sh12 billion fuel importation scandal that left investigators pursuing at least 20 individuals at DCI headquarters.

The scandal centred on the importation of approximately 128,000 metric tonnes of fuel outside the established government-to-government framework, including a consignment aboard the MV Paloma that docked at Mombasa between March 27 and 29, 2026. Preliminary DCI findings indicated that fuel stock levels had been falsified by officials to manufacture a sense of impending shortage, creating the justification for an emergency procurement that bypassed normal controls. The fuel was traced to Saudi Aramco before being redirected through a local Kenyan importer, raising questions about who authorised the emergency and who benefited.

Energy CS Opiyo Wandayi told a parliamentary committee on April 13 that he neither knew about the deal nor approved it. DCI investigators signalled they intended to move beyond the officials who had resigned, toward decisions made at the highest policy levels. That investigation is still ongoing. The department Harsama is now walking into is not a clean slate. It is a crime scene with unresolved forensic questions, an active DCI probe, and a procurement culture that has only recently been stripped of the officials most visibly implicated in its worst instincts.

The department Harsama is walking into is not a clean slate. It is a crime scene with unresolved forensic questions and an active DCI probe.

THE RUTO APPOINTMENT PROBLEM

President Ruto’s decision to move Harsama into the Petroleum docket raises questions that go beyond the individual. It speaks to a pattern of appointments in this administration that reward loyalty and regional political geometry over integrity or institutional fitness. Harsama was a UDA stalwart who ran on the President’s ticket in Marsabit in 2022. His appointment to the PS for Crops Development after the election was widely understood as reward for that loyalty. His posting to ASAL gave him proximity to a Sh7.4 billion annual budget. And now the Petroleum docket, which manages Kenya’s oil, gas, and fuel sector, oversees KPC and the National Oil Corporation, and sits at the intersection of billions in annual procurement.

The Office of the President has never publicly acknowledged the allegations made against Harsama during his ASAL tenure. It has not indicated whether any internal accountability review was conducted. It has not required him to clear his name before being handed a new, more consequential responsibility. What it has done is quietly transfer him, strip his old docket of its contested function through executive restructuring, and now hand him a sector that has just demonstrated, in vivid and costly detail, what happens when senior officials treat procurement as a personal enrichment opportunity.

Placing at the helm of Kenya’s petroleum apparatus a man who has not answered credible allegations of doing precisely that in a different sector is not a continuity appointment. It is a risk appointment. And it is a signal, not to Kenya’s investors or regional partners, but to every procurement officer, every supplier, and every official in the energy chain about what kind of conduct the Ruto administration is prepared to tolerate at senior levels.

THE ACCOUNTABILITY GAP

What is most troubling about the Harsama appointment is not the man himself but what his trajectory reveals about the architecture of accountability in Kenya’s executive. Allegations against him were raised in multiple credible outlets over more than a year. They were specific, sourced, and detailed. They were reported by The Standard, People Daily, and Kenya Insights across 2025. They named a figure, a mechanism, and the communities that bore the cost.

The EACC did not open a public inquiry. The DCI did not announce an investigation. Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, called upon by civil society to act, did not table findings. The Office of the PS for ASAL did not respond to requests for comment at the time the allegations were published. And now the man at the centre of those allegations is publicly pledging, with evident sincerity, to serve the petroleum sector with dedication, professionalism, and integrity.

Integrity, in Harsama’s case, remains an aspiration. Not a demonstrated standard. The communities of Kenya’s ASAL counties, who depended on relief food that was allegedly being auctioned off by a cartel from above, never received an explanation. They never received a refund. They never received justice. And the man they say presided over that system has now been handed a desk with a new view of one of Kenya’s most critical and lucrative sectors.

He says he is grateful. The question Kenyans should be asking is why the President believes they should be.

Katiba Institute has moved to the High Court seeking to stop the Kenyan government from establishing any Ebola quarantine or treatment facility linked to the United States, escalating a growing national debate over reports that Kenya could host a regional infectious disease containment centre for foreign nationals.

In a petition filed under certificate of urgency at the Milimani High Court, the rights lobby has sued the Attorney-General and the Ministry of Health, arguing that the alleged plans raise serious constitutional, public health and sovereignty concerns. Health rights organisation KELIN Kenya has been listed as an interested party in the case.

The petition seeks conservatory orders to immediately halt any negotiations, approvals or operationalisation of an Ebola-related quarantine, isolation or treatment facility in Kenya pending the determination of the case.

Katiba Institute is also asking the court to compel the Ministry of Health to publicly disclose within 24 hours all agreements, memoranda and negotiations allegedly entered into with the United States or other foreign governments regarding the proposed facility. The institute further wants the government ordered to produce environmental impact assessments, biosafety evaluations, parliamentary approvals and emergency response protocols connected to the plan.

The case comes amid heightened public scrutiny following reports that Kenya and the United States have been engaged in discussions over establishing a specialised quarantine facility for American citizens and other persons exposed to highly infectious diseases such as Ebola.

In court papers, Katiba Institute argues that Kenya risks being turned into what it describes as an “offshore quarantine hub” for foreign countries without adequate public participation or parliamentary oversight.

Through lawyer Malidzo Nyawa, the lobby group claims the alleged arrangement has been pursued secretly and without transparency, despite the potential implications for public safety and national sovereignty.

An affidavit sworn by Nora Mbagathi states that the government has not sufficiently explained the scope of the proposed arrangement or demonstrated that Kenya possesses the infrastructure required to safely manage Ebola cases.

The institute argues that Kenya lacks a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory, considered the global standard for handling highly dangerous pathogens such as the Ebola virus. According to the petition, the country currently operates Biosafety Level 1 to 3 laboratories, with only a handful meeting Level 3 standards.

Katiba Institute says this limitation exposes healthcare workers and the wider public to heightened risks should containment measures fail or an outbreak occur.

The petition further cites lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic, referencing previous court interventions in public health decisions, including the case filed by the Law Society of Kenya and other petitioners challenging government pandemic measures.

The lobby group argues that the court has a constitutional duty to intervene before any irreversible harm occurs, warning that delayed action could undermine the rights to life, health and access to information guaranteed under the Constitution.

The legal challenge comes just days after Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale insisted that Kenya remains prepared to respond to Ebola threats and dismissed fears that the country was being converted into a foreign disease containment zone.

The Ministry of Health has not yet formally responded to the petition, but government officials have maintained that Kenya continues to strengthen its disease surveillance and emergency preparedness systems in collaboration with international partners.

The case is expected to intensify public debate over Kenya’s role in global health security programmes and the extent to which foreign-backed health initiatives should be subjected to parliamentary scrutiny and public participation before implementation.

The National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) has announced the rollout of instant fines effective June 1.

In a briefing on Thursday, the authority said it has reviewed minor traffic offences and developed internal procedures to guide the implementation framework following the withdrawal of the earlier notice on the rollout of the Minor Traffic Offences System.

The review, it said, was done in collaboration with the National Police Service (NPS), the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP), the Judiciary, and other relevant enforcement agencies.

“NTSA wishes to notify members of the public that the Government will operationalise a modernised enforcement framework for minor traffic offences under Sections 117 and 117A of the Traffic Act (Cap. 403), effective June 1, 2026,” the authority said on Thursday.

The move seeks to enhance road safety for all users, increase compliance with traffic laws and reduce congestion in traffic courts.

It also aims at promoting transparency, accountability, and efficiency in traffic enforcement.

Under the new framework, motorists who commit certain minor traffic offences will no longer need to appear in court immediately.

Instead, NTSA said they will receive a Police Notification of traffic offence upon their detection, either by police officers during routine enforcement or electronically via traffic cameras and other digital monitoring systems.

“These notifications may be served in several ways, including personal delivery by police officers, affixing the notice to the vehicle, or electronically via SMS, email, or an approved digital traffic enforcement platform. Motorists are therefore encouraged to ensure their contact details in the NTSA registration system are accurate and up to date,” the statement adds.

The authority said the notification will only be sent to the driver or registered vehicle owner once sufficient evidence has been gathered.

It shall contain key details such as the nature of the offence, the date, time and location it occurred, the prescribed penalty, payment instructions, and response deadlines.

Upon receiving a notice, motorists have the option of admitting liability and paying the prescribed fine within the stipulated period or disputing the allegation in court.

“If the motorist chooses to pay the fine, the matter can be settled without the need for a court appearance. However, the court retains the power to reduce or refund the penalty based on mitigating circumstances (if any) and administer demerit points against the driver’s licence where appropriate.”

“Failure to respond, pay fines, or appear in court when required may result in harsher penalties imposed by the courts. Motorists have the right to access evidence, such as photographs or video recordings, supporting the alleged offence,” the authority warned.

It also assured that all personal data collected will be handled in accordance with the Constitution and the Data Protection Act.

Meanwhile, all motorists are advised to obey traffic laws to avoid being subject to fines.