The axe has fallen at the Anniversary Towers. Marjan Hussein Marjan, the stoic CEO of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), has been forced to resign following a blistering confrontation with commissioners that exposed a rot of governance and procurement scandals.

The official statement cites a "mutual agreement" and a "structured transition," but sources inside the boardroom tell a different story. Marjan was reportedly cornered during a crisis meeting on Tuesday, February 3, where he was confronted with an Auditor-General's report flagging massive irregularities. The commissioners, led by Chairperson Erastus Ethekon, essentially gave him an ultimatum: jump, or be pushed.

The Procurement Black Hole

Marjan’s undoing was not the conduct of elections, but the business of them. The audit revealed that 40 percent of payments made to external legal advocates—running into hundreds of millions of shillings—were "red-flagged" as potentially fake or irregular. Furthermore, Marjan is accused of unilaterally extending the contract for the KIEMS kits in 2024, a decision he made while the commission was not fully constituted.

"Don't you think your stay is not sustainable given that the entire commission has lost confidence in you?" a commissioner reportedly asked him. It was the final nail in the coffin. His unilateral procurement of strategic election materials violated every standard operating procedure in the book.

• The Smartmatic Shadow: The opposition has long claimed Marjan was compromised, citing his insistence on retaining the controversial Smartmatic technology despite system failures.
• Soft Landing: The "mutual separation" is a diplomatic face-saving measure, allowing Marjan to exit without the immediate humiliation of a firing, but the damage to his reputation is terminal.

A Commission Cleaning House

Marjan’s exit clears the way for the new team of commissioners to rebuild public trust ahead of the 2027 polls. But it also raises a terrifying question: if the CEO was operating without oversight for two years, what else was signed in the dark? The resignation is not the end of the scandal; it is likely just the opening chapter of a forensic audit that could shake the IEBC to its foundations.