IG Douglas Kanja missed a Senate summons over his failure to arrest Isiolo Governor Abdi Guyo, citing a trip to China. Senators want him back — in person.
Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja was due in the Senate on Monday, September 7, to explain one thing: why, weeks after being directly ordered to do so, his officers still had not arrested Isiolo Governor Abdi Guyo.
He never showed up.
Instead, senators on the County Public Accounts Committee (CPAC) received a letter. Kanja, it said, was traveling to China on official business that same day. He could not attend.
For a Committee that has spent close to two months chasing down a governor who keeps slipping its summons, the excuse landed badly.
The standoff goes back to July 9, when Governor Guyo first skipped a CPAC hearing, citing County Assembly engagements. Senators weren't convinced. Committee chair and Homa Bay Senator Moses Kajwang invoked Article 125 of the Constitution and directed IG Kanja to produce the governor before the Senate by July 20.
He didn't. Guyo dodged again in late July — this time sending a letter through the County Secretary barely two hours before a scheduled Monday session, asking for a reschedule. Senators had had enough. Kajwang ordered a second arrest directive, setting August 6 as the new deadline for Kanja to bring the governor in.
That deadline also came and went without an arrest.
In his letter explaining the latest failure, Kanja told the Committee he had assembled a special team specifically to arrest Guyo and present him before the senators. It didn't work.
"Apparently, the Governor got wind of it and successfully evaded our dragnet," Kanja wrote.
It's the kind of line that might read as candid in another context. In this one, CPAC chair Moses Kajwang treated it as an admission of failure dressed up as an explanation.
"The wording in the letter is not useful at all. It is unfortunate that the impression he creates in the letter is that the NPS is clueless, ineffective and powerless," Kajwang said.
Kajwang wasn't the only one unimpressed. Isiolo Senator Fatuma Dullo accused the Inspector General of showing contempt for Parliament, arguing that Kanja had repeatedly cycled through different excuses to avoid facing the Committee in person. She went further, claiming Governor Guyo has continued attending political events in Isiolo — in the company of police officers — even as he ignores Senate summons.
"It is not enough for the IG to explain to the Committee his efforts," Dullo said. Her proposal: escalate the matter and have the full Senate, sitting as a Committee of the Whole, compel Kanja to appear.
The idea found backing from CPAC Vice Chairperson Samson Cherarkey, who framed the Committee's frustration in blunt terms: "We are being mob-lynched by the public on matters of accountability."
For now, the Committee has rejected Kanja's letter outright and reiterated its position — the IG comes in person, or the standoff escalates.
"The failure by the police to arrest such a known public figure is sending the wrong signal to the public," Kajwang said. "We reiterate that the IG must appear before this Committee and explain why he has failed to arrest the Governor."
This isn't new territory for CPAC. The Committee ran an almost identical playbook earlier this year against Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja, who skipped his own summons over alleged non-compliance with a Council of Governors resolution. Police camped outside City Hall in a dramatic, ultimately unsuccessful bid to arrest him. The Council of Governors even went to court to block the Senate's arrest powers — and lost, with the court affirming that parliamentary committees can compel attendance and order arrests when summons are ignored.
The Guyo case now looks set to follow the same script: a governor betting that Senate orders carry more bark than bite, a police service caught in the middle, and a Committee determined not to blink first.
Underneath the standoff over summons and letters is the original question CPAC wants answered: how Isiolo County spent billions of shillings in public funds. The Committee is working through Auditor-General queries on the county's 2024/25 accounts, and has also pulled in the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) to investigate possible misuse of the money.
Every week Governor Guyo avoids the Senate is a week that scrutiny of that spending stalls. For a Committee racing to clear a backlog of counties before it can even begin reviewing 2025/26 accounts, the delay carries a cost well beyond politics.
Whether Kanja appears in person next time — or sends another letter — remains to be seen.