Ojwang's murder highlights Ruto's unkept campaign promises on extrajudicial killings

The torture and death of Albert Ojwang’ in police custody has rekindled public debate about lofty pledges by the Kenya Kwanza administration that campaigned partly on a platform of ending rights violations by the state, such as extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.

The administration that came to power in 2022 failed to arrest the situation, with human rights bodies expressing concern at the unabated violations and calling for an end.

Seemingly taken aback by the epidemic of enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and the catalogue of human rights abuses ostensibly committed by the administration he served as Deputy President, Dr. William Ruto, convincing in tone, abandoned the security policy identified with his then boss, Uhuru Kenyatta.

"Kenya Kwanza will end political weaponization of state institutions. We want these institutions to operate independently as is expected of them by the Constitution," said Ruto on June 30, 2022.

And for the horrifying violence meted out on Kenyans, then DP Ruto directed executive anger at the police, laying blame at the doorstep of duty bearers.

"We have the most incompetent Inspector General of Police, I think in the world, the most incompetent in the whole world,' he added.

His assumption of office offered the new administration remedial measures, the casualties list kicking in.

"Mambo ya usalama ikaharibika, police wakawa watu wa kuwauwa Wakenya badala ya kuwalinda. Mimi nimeamrisha juzi ivunjwe ile ilikuwa inaitwa SSP ambaye ilikuwa inauwa Wakenya kiholela. That is the history we want to forget," he said on October 16, 2022.

"How did Kenyans end up being killed in this manner and then it was business as usual? 30 bodies in Yala, 17 in Tana River, and a container here in Nairobi area where people were being slaughtered in a police station—what kind of rogue institution? And that is why I fired that Kinoti man," Ruto added on  January, 4 2023.

Despite the piecemeal interventions, the notoriously trigger-happy culture of Kenya’s police service continued, including indiscriminate targeting of unarmed civilians protesting against punitive tax proposals…

Young Kenyans are lifting the lid on maladministration and gross governance failure.

The taxpayer-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights reported 60 cases of extrajudicial killings and 71 cases of abductions and enforced disappearances after the Gen Z protests, calling the wave of killings "unprecedented targeting and killings of individuals" as of October 2024.