The gloves are off as the Senate oversight committee declares war on county graft, demanding immediate forensic audits and criminal probes into billions of shillings allegedly siphoned through stalled projects and ghost payrolls.

The simmering cold war between the Senate and the Council of Governors has detonated into an all-out confrontation over accountability. In a blistering session that left no room for ambiguity, Senator Moses Kajwang’, the fierce chairperson of the Senate County Public Accounts Committee (CPAC), has effectively read the riot act to county bosses. The directive is clear, immediate, and punitive: the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) must immediately swing into action to investigate widespread breaches of public finance laws that have left county treasuries bleeding and millions of Kenyans denied basic services.

The Mandera Billions: A Case Study in Excess

At the epicenter of this legislative earthquake is the shocking revelation emerging from Mandera County. [...](asc_slot://start-slot-3)The committee has flagged a staggering KSh 900 million in "emergency" expenditure incurred by the administration of Governor Mohamed Adan Khalif. What has raised the eyebrows of the oversight committee is not just the volume of the money, but the opacity surrounding its usage. Senators are questioning how hundreds of millions could be burned on "relief" and "seedlings" in a region ravaged by drought, with little to no physical evidence on the ground to back up the paper trails.

"We are not just asking questions anymore; we are demanding answers with the force of the law behind us," Kajwang’ thundered during the proceedings. "When you have emergency funds being used as a slush fund for dubious procurement while the people of Mandera starve, that is not just mismanagement; it is a crime against humanity."

• The Ghost Workers Menace: Beyond the emergency funds, the committee has ordered a forensic audit into the county payrolls. Preliminary reports suggest that counties are hemorrhaging billions annually to "ghost workers"—names that exist only on payment vouchers but never appear in offices.
• Stalled Projects: The Auditor-General, Nancy Gathungu, has been tasked with physically verifying multi-million shilling projects that exist on paper but remain incomplete skeletons on the ground, serving as monuments to wastage.
• The Extortion Counter-Narrative: In a twist of political intrigue, Governors have hit back, accusing Senators of extortion—a claim Kajwang’ dismissed as the "last refuge of the guilty."

A Systemic Rot

The rot is not confined to the frontier counties. The CPAC has widened its dragnet to encompass all 47 devolved units, demanding a comprehensive report on statutory deductions. It has emerged that county governments are routinely deducting billions from employee salaries—for NSSF, NHIF, and Sacco loans—but failing to remit them. This brazen theft of staff wages has left thousands of county workers blacklisted by banks and denied medical care, a situation Kajwang described as "administrative terrorism."

As the Senate forwards these files to the EACC, the message to the Governors is unequivocal: the era of "briefcase accountability" is over. With the 2027 election cycle looming, the Senate is keen to scrub the books clean, even if it means dragging powerful county chiefs from their mansions to the dock. For the taxpayer, the hope is that this time, the roar of the Senate will lead to the bite of the law.