18th August 2026
Ref: COFEK/PRES/SH/WSR/08/2026
H.E William Samoei Ruto, CIC, CGH,
President &
Commander-in-Chief of the Kenya Defence Forces
Republic of Kenya
State/Harambee House
NAIROBI
Dear Your Excellency,
RE: AN OPEN LETTER DEMANDING IMMEDIATE RE-ORGANIZATION OF THE INTERNAL SECURITY DOCKET LEADERSHIP AND DECISIVE ACTION AGAINST STATE-TOLERATED POLITICAL GOONISM
We write to you not as adversaries of your Government, but as citizens exercising the very constitutional duty you swore to protect — the duty to speak when the Republic is in danger. The Consumers Federation of Kenya (COFEK) has, for over two decades, stood for the ordinary Kenyan: the trader whose kiosk is burned and meagre stock destroyed, the hotelier whose investment is looted, the mother who cannot walk her child to school past a mob armed with machetes and rungus, the hawker who must sleep hungry for being unable to worker and the taxpayer whose money is spent on a security apparatus that watches while citizens are maimed. It is that Kenyan on whose behalf this letter is respectably written.
The events of 16th and 17th August 2026 in Homa Bay County — where hired goons, operating with what witnesses and religious leaders describe as open impunity, torched vehicles, ransacked the Tourist Hotel (destroying an estimated Sh30M in property), attacked the SDA Lake Victoria Field headquarters at Lala village, assaulted journalists, human rights defenders and political rivals, and left a police officer dead — are not an isolated tragedy. They are the entrenchment of a pattern. That pattern must now be named for what it is, confronted, and dismantled.
I. LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL FOUNDATION OF THIS DEMAND
Your Excellency sir,
You took the Presidential Oath under the Third Schedule of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010, swearing to “protect and defend the Constitution” and to “protect and uphold the sovereignty, integrity and dignity of the people of Kenya.” Article 132(1)(c)(iii) of the Constitution obligates the President to “ensure the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms and the rule of law.” Article 129 vests executive authority in the President to be exercised in a manner compatible with the Constitution.
Article 238 establishes national security as the “freedom from fear” of Kenyans and their property, and commands that national security be pursued “in compliance with the law and with the utmost respect for the rule of law, democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Article 244 obligates the National Police Service to “prevent corruption and promote and practise transparency and accountability” and to “comply with constitutional standards of human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
Articles 29 and 37 — the right to security of the person and the right to peaceful, unarmed assembly — are not privileges dispensed at the pleasure of a county security team; they are inviolable guarantees. Section 24 of the National Police Service Act and the objects of the National Cohesion and Integration Act likewise place an affirmative duty on the State to prevent, and not merely react to, politically instigated violence.
Where these guarantees are not merely breached but breached repeatedly, visibly, and with apparent official tolerance, the constitutional duty to act shifts from the security agencies alone to you, as the Head of State, who commands them. You cannot outsource this responsibility. You cannot wait for the next by-election, the next rally, launch event, the next funeral, to say the same words you have said before. Please make an urgent televised live-appearance and talk to the Nation Kenya on how you will restore the law and order of our beloved motherland, Kenya.
II. A CHRONOLOGY OF ENTRENCHED GOONISM — YOUR OWN TOUGH TALK NOTWITHSTANDING
The record below is not compiled to embarrass Your Excellency’s Government. It is compiled because a pattern that repeats despite repeated official promises of a crackdown is no longer a security failure — it is a policy choice, or a demonstration that the Interior Ministry’s writ does not run in the places that matter most.
(i) January 2026 — Kasipul By-Election, Homa Bay County: Day-long violence marred voting. Homa Bay Town MP and ODM chief agent Peter Kaluma sustained serious head injuries after an attack by youths while monitoring the process; his bodyguard’s firearm was reportedly lost in the chaos. Seventeen youths were arrested patrolling with machetes.
(ii) June 2026 — All Saints Cathedral, Nairobi: Goons raided a budget discussion forum at the Cathedral. CS Murkomen publicly pledged that the perpetrators were being “rounded up” — a pledge widely and correctly criticised as hollow given the recurring pattern.
(iii) June–July 2026 — Kisumu and Nyahururu: Political violence left two people dead. CS Murkomen announced 20 arrests and called on the Judiciary to impose deterrent sentences, even as questions mounted over why the violence was not prevented in the first place.
(iv) 1st July 2026 — Ol Kalou, Nyandarua County: Former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua alleged that a special police unit and state-linked goons abducted and assaulted Democracy for the Citizens Party (DCP) supporters. The Interior CS’s public response was combative rather than investigative.
(v) Mid-August 2026 — Mulot, Nakuru and Salgaa: Former Interior Cabinet Secretary Dr Fred Matiang’i publicly alleged a coordinated pattern of stoning, intimidation and attacks on opposition figures across multiple counties in the same weekend — incidents he stated, from his own experience running the security docket, “do not happen without the knowledge of the country’s security leadership.”
(vi) 16th–17th August 2026 — Homa Bay County: The Linda Mwananchi mobilisation was met with sustained mob violence beginning the night before with the destruction of the Tourist Hotel. Six vehicles were torched, a church was vandalised, journalists and a human rights defender were assaulted, one police officer died, and — most tellingly — no timely statement was issued by the local Governor, the Police, or the Principal Secretary for Interior, who hails from the area. Thirty-seven suspects were eventually arrested after the fact.
Set against this record are Your Excellency’s own Cabinet Secretary Hon Kipchumba Murkomen’s repeated public assurances: that “the biggest threat to national security” is political leaders who recruit goons; that there is now “a national consensus” to deal firmly with goonism; that the crackdown “will continue.” Each of these statements was followed, within weeks, by a fresh atrocity. Rhetoric without arrests, and arrests without convictions of the financiers and organisers, is not governance. It is theatre — and Kenyans are paying for the tickets with their lives, their shops and their sense of safety. We are tired. We can’t take more promises. We demand action.
III. THE CO-OPTION OF ODM AND THE NORMALISATION OF A MONOPOLY OF VIOLENCE
It is a matter of public record and legitimate public concern that the political “broad-based government” arrangement between Your Excellency’s administration and sections of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) has coincided with, rather than curbed, the culture of politically deployed goon squads in Nyanza and beyond. COFEK does not allege — and cannot allege without judicial finding — the personal culpability of any named individual. But we are entitled, as is every Kenyan, to ask why the areas most associated with this arrangement are precisely the areas where impunity for organised violence appears most entrenched, and why official condemnation so consistently arrives after the fact rather than in its prevention.
IV. INSTITUTIONAL SILENCE AND PARTISAN CAPTURE
This crisis of security is compounded by a crisis of institutional integrity. On 8th July 2026, the Milimani High Court (Mburu J.) issued conservatory orders barring the Speaker of the National Assembly, Rt Hon. Moses Wetang’ula, and the Speaker of the Senate, Rt Hon. Amason Kingi, from using the authority and prestige of their constitutional offices to conduct partisan political campaigns. Public reporting subsequently documented continued political mobilisation activity by the Speakers notwithstanding those orders, prompting contempt proceedings.
When the very officers constitutionally required to preside with impartiality over the two Houses of Parliament are credibly alleged to be defying lawful court orders in pursuit of partisan ends, the doctrine of separation of powers — and with it, the ordinary Kenyan’s confidence that the law applies equally to the powerful — is gravely undermined. This is how impunity is entrenched – from the Legislature to the Executive.
When this is layered upon a National Police Service that appears unable or unwilling to pre-empt foreseeable violence, and independent oversight bodies whose condemnations are, with respect, not matched by consequence, the cumulative effect is a government reduced to doublespeak: firm words in Nairobi press briefings, and firm silence when the machetes come out in Homa Bay, Ol Kalou, Kisumu or Nakuru.
V. THE COST TO KENYA’S STANDING AND PROSPERITY
Kenya has long been described, with pride, as an island of relative stability within a volatile Horn and Great Lakes region. That reputation is not a birthright; it is an asset that took decades to build and can be eroded in a single election cycle. Independent peace and security indices already track a deteriorating trajectory for Kenya, driven substantially by political instability and organised violence.
Every torched matatu, every looted hotel, and every headline naming Kenya alongside conflict-affected states is a direct hit to tourism arrivals, to foreign direct investment decisions made in boardrooms far from Homa Bay, and to the informal traders and hoteliers whom COFEK exists to protect. A country cannot market itself as an investment and tourism destination by day while tolerating goon and banditry economies by night. This must stop — not in the next Cabinet reshuffle cycle, but now.
VI. OUR REASONED DEMANDS
Accordingly, and pursuant to Articles 1, 10, 27, 29, 37, 129, 132, 238 and 244 of the Constitution, COFEK demands that Your Excellency, as Commander-in-Chief and holder of the instruments of State power and based on Article 135 of the Constitution:
(i) Immediately reshape the internal security docket: Relieve Cabinet Secretary for Interior and National Administration, Hon. Kipchumba Murkomen, and Principal Secretary Dr Raymond Omollo, of their responsibilities, and appoint replacements with a demonstrated, non-partisan commitment to operational policing free of political interference.
(ii) Direct the Inspector-General of Police and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations to arrest, investigate and charge every individual credibly linked to the Homa Bay mayhem and prior incidents of organised political violence — irrespective of whether the trail leads to a Governor, Member of Parliament, Cabinet Secretary, Principal Secretary or party official.
(iii) Publicly and unequivocally order that the National Police Service (NPS) operate free of instruction from any political quarter — UDA, ODM, or any other formation — and that security deployment decisions be driven exclusively by intelligence and law, not political convenience.Also, relieve senior police officers associated with various scandals and or known crimes. This will remove impunity within the NPS.
(iv) Require both UDA and ODM leadership to issue joint, public commitments to non-violence and to the disbandment of any youth groupings affiliated with their parties that have been implicated in organised intimidation.
(v) Direct the Independent Policing Oversight Authority and the NCIC to publish, within thirty days, a public accountability report on the Homa Bay incident and the preceding chronology set out above, including findings on command responsibility.
(vi) Ensure full compliance with all extant court orders — including those binding the Speakers of the two Houses — as a demonstration that the rule of law, not political expedience, governs this Republic.
VII. CONCLUSION
Your Excellency, you have the instruments of power. You do not lack the constitutional authority, the security architecture, or the political mandate to end this. What is required now is the will. History will not remember the countless and flowery speeches promising crackdowns; it will remember whether the President who held office in this period was the one who allowed Kenya’s hard-won post-1963 cohesion to unravel, or the one who, at the moment it mattered most, chose to act.
COFEK stands ready to support, through evidence-based advocacy and engagement, any genuine, non-partisan effort to restore order, protect livelihoods, and rebuild public trust in the security sector. What we cannot do — what no patriotic Kenyan institution should not do — is stay silent while the Republic dithers on the edge of a collapse it has both the means and the constitutional duty to prevent.
We look forward to your Excellency’s urgent and decisive response. Thank you
Yours Sincerely,
Stephen Mutoro
SECRETARY-GENERAL
CC:
The Rt. Hon. Chief Justice and President of the Supreme Court of Kenya
The Speaker, National Assembly of Kenya
The Speaker, Senate of Kenya
The Chairperson, National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC)
The Chairperson, Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA)
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR)
The Chairperson, Law Society of Kenya (LSK)
Diplomatic Missions accredited to the Republic of Kenya
