Cherargei: A lawyer by training, but every inch a loyalist in practice

Some Kenyan politicians wear their professional credentials the way a peacock wears its feathers; not to demonstrate competence, but to attract attention and intimidate those who question them.

Nandi County Senator Samson Cherargei is a lawyer by training, something he has never been shy about broadcasting. Yet when one measures that training against his legislative record, a gap emerges between the training and the conduct. A lawyer who consistently proposes legislation that runs headlong into the Constitution cannot be seen as demonstrating legal acumen. He is, instead, demonstrating political subservience.

Consider the Cherargei’s Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Bill, 2024, which proposed extending the terms of the president, MPs, governors, and MCAs from five to seven years. A lawyer who internalised his training would know that term limits are not a bureaucratic inconvenience to be tinkered with by senators.

They are the foundational guardrails of the 2010 constitutional settlement, secured after decades of authoritarian excesses. Even Cherargei’s own party, UDA, distanced itself, with Secretary-General Hassan Omar describing the bill’s sponsors as preoccupied with sensational distractions and legislative mischief. When your own party disowns you, you are clearly too much even for the people who brought you to power.

Out of 168,801 public submissions, only 11 supported the bill. The Senate email system crashed under the weight of Kenyans flooding it with objections. Cherargei eventually succumbed to pressure. He has since attempted to revive the same idea, suggesting his withdrawal was tactical rather than principled.

Which brings us to his latest misadventure. On May 4, Cherargei tabled a motion calling on the Senate to withdraw or reduce all retirement benefits enjoyed by former President Uhuru Kenyatta under the Presidential Retirement Benefits Act, on the grounds that Uhuru has engaged in partisan politics; attending meetings, endorsing candidates, and refusing to become invisible. Kenyatta, however, stated plainly that he was not seeking any seat and had a right to defend his political party. Every citizen, retired president or not, retains that right.

Article 151(3) of the Constitution is explicit; retirement benefits of a former president shall not be varied to his disadvantage during his lifetime. A court petition was filed within days, arguing that Cherargei’s motion violates this protection. However, the legal weakness is beside the point.

The political motivation is too obvious to require any interpretation. The question Cherargei cannot answer without incriminating himself is: If Uhuru were today campaigning for William Ruto rather than endorsing Matiang’i, would this motion be in the Senate? It’s doubtful. No motion would have been filed or audit demanded. The Presidential Retirement Benefits Act would have remained as obscure to Cherargei as it was before Uhuru became a political inconvenience to his boss.

Then there was November 2025, when Cherargei stood in Kapsabet and urged the presidents of Uganda and Tanzania to “finya hao bila huruma”(crush them mercilessly), referring to Kenyans allegedly meddling in those countries. Many read the remark as a veiled endorsement of the abductions then sweeping East Africa.

Cherargei issued a half-hearted clarification, insisting he meant only diplomatic action. A Senator who is also a lawyer, speaking at a time when enforced disappearances had become a horror, urging foreign governments to crush Kenyans without mercy, then retreating into semantic fog, cannot be passed off as miscommunication. That is a worldview, period.

Nelson Havi, former LSK President, once described Cherargei as the president’s exhaust pipe; the outlet through which political fumes are vented so the engine stays clean. A legislator who uses the Senate as a mechanism for political retaliation, who proposes constitutional amendments that serve one man’s electoral interests, and wraps it all in legal language he appears not to comprehend, is hardly performing a legislative function. He is performing a sycophantic duty. Kenya deserves better from its Senate. It certainly deserves better from its lawyers.