Security budget balloons while justice starves and protesters bleed

For probably the first time in Kenya’s post-independence history, the annual budget address – which today we call the Budget Statement presented by our Treasury Cabinet Secretary in Parliament – wasn’t the headline across pretty much all of our leading popular dailies.  The one exception ignored the address but described the budget as a “begging spree”.  Remember when Minister and briefcase would adorn every paper’s front page, with neat graphics about “winners and losers”?

Think about it.  In which country claiming to be at peace, not war, isn’t the budget headline news?  The harsh reality, as epitomised by last Thursday’s “No Justice, No Budget” public protests in support of murdered Albert Ojwang as the Budget Statement was read, is that Kenya is at war.

It is a different war from the 1990’s when we had opposition-led “No Reforms, No Budget” chaos within Parliament itself.  Thirty years ago, the war was about “input and process”, which gave us a fantastic constitution 15 years later. Today, the war is about ““output and outcome”.  Reform is a process, justice is an outcome.

That the leading agents in this war are “Gen Z” is appropriate. As children of this Constitution, their basic expectation of government is not simply that service delivery (output) is better, but so are outcomes (welfare and wellbeing – lives, living, livelihoods)

Put it this way.  Nobody is interested in official waffle about “more reforms”.  What the people are looking for is the outputs then outcomes of reform.  Not police reform, but reformed policing first, and public, private and community safety and security second.  Not the “4C’s” of our police reform short-termism – cash (pay), capacity (people), cars and computers.  It’s way beyond that!

The fact of the matter is our political class will not get it.  And this increasingly seems to be the case with the current ruling regime, by whatever name we call it – broad, bread or blood-based. There is little point expending effort or energy on election manifesto promises of 2022.  It’s gone!

“Not getting it” is not simply a failure of understanding, but a resistance to change.  It is not just about the lack of capacity, it’s also about the missing will and courage to do the right thing. It’s this latter incentives part pushed by “Gen Z”, or “Gen Zote”, that frightens these political elites.

We have still not learnt the core lesson of 2007/8; that peace is about much more than the absence of war, it is also about the presence of justice.  Or more pithily, justice is a pre-requisite for peace.  After the deaths under this regime in legitimate 2023 and 2024 protests, Albert Ojwang’s murder by police is the justice litmus test; it can be neither whitewash nor witch-hunt.

There are three ways for this administration to think about this test.  First, that justice happens when security and rights are in balance. That is, when national security as human security is balanced against human rights and freedoms through a justice lens.  Balance is the operative word.

Second, without this security-justice-rights balance as a foundation, we don’t get to the next level, where peace balances prosperity and progress.  That is, when individual and national prosperity is balanced against collective human progress through a peace underwritten by justice.

Third and most pertinent is the immediacy of the current moment.  In making 2025 a call for justice, Kenyans elevated their demands from the accountability calls of 2024.  In the sad case of Ojwang, accountability calls for those involved in his murder to be held to account - taking responsibility and facing consequences; “never again” justice calls for “root and branch” fixes to the problem.

Back to the 2025/26 budget.  Let’s juxtapose this background with a few resource allocations.  

The first thing we learn is that we plan to spend Sh450 billion on national security as defined in the Budget statement to cover Defence (Sh202 billion), Police (Sh126 billion), Intelligence (Sh51 billion), Prisons (Sh38 billion) and Internal Security and National Administration (Sh33 billion). Tucked in all of this are budgets for all manner of spying and social media tracking tools. To be clear, our Medium-Term Expenditure Framework normally slots Defence and Intelligence under National Security; the others are in the Governance, Justice, Law & Order Sector (GJLOS).

Sh450 billion on national security exceeds the equitable share (Sh405 billion) for our 47 county governments. It’s only less than what we will spend in education (Sh702 billion of which Sh387 billion covers teachers) and energy, infrastructure and ICT (Sh535 billion including Sh270 billion on roads and transport, Sh143 billion on housing and Sh95 billion on energy and petroleum).  

On the other hand, Sh450 billion on national security is over ten times the Sh43 billion budget allocation across key justice and rights GJLOS institutions, including Judiciary (Sh27 billion), State Law Office (5 billion), Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission and Director of Public Prosecutions (Sh4 billion each) down to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights at Sh500 million! Does this look like the “independent” security-justice-rights balance we need? Or should we add on sector-specific rights as a proxy across education (Sh702 billion), health (Sh138 billion), environment, forestry, water, sanitation and irrigation (Sh79 billion) or agriculture and livestock (Sh60 billion) budgets?  These are not idle questions, they test our budget mindsets!

If we shift our lens to oversight and accountability institutions – excluding Teachers Service Commission (Sh387 billion, almost all payroll), Parliament (Sh48 billion plus Sh58 billion NG-CDF) and the Judiciary (Sh27 billion) - we are left with roughly 40 billion – less than 10 per cent of that national security allocation – to cover 14 critical institutions, including the Office of the Auditor-General, Controller of Budget, Public Service Commission, National Gender and Equality Commission, National Land Commission and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. 

This list also includes Salaries and Remuneration Commission, Commission on Administrative Justice, Commission on Revenue Allocation, Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Office of the Registrar of Political Parties, Independent Policing Oversight Authority and the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.

Finally, we can also see Sh43 billion in the “hip hop” spaces in the budget (outside Sh18 billion in our Sports mess) - ICT and Digital Economy (Sh16 billion), Climate Change (Sh5 billion), Youth Affairs and Creative Economy (Sh5 billion), Culture and Heritage (Sh4 billion), Blue Economy and Fisheries (Sh8 billion) and MSMEs (Sh5 billion) – totalling less than 10 per cent of national security,

Which takes us back to the beginning.  A budget statement far overshadowed by public protests and demonstrations seeking immediate accountability and lasting justice for Albert Ojwang.  This is the “outputs and outcomes” war that Gen Z to Gen Zote are waging on government excesses.

Yet, on soft interrogation, a budget allocation to national security ten times larger than that for independent justice and rights institutions from one lens, and independent oversight and accountability bodies from another. And ten times larger than the promising youth spaces in the budget.

Here’s your Sh450 billion question for today, is government at war with Kenyans?