ADVERT 
ADVERTThe Ombudsman’s damning advisory opinion vindicates the Assembly’s concerns, but it also exposes a troubling weakness in the House: an oversight institution cannot allow alleged constitutional violations to fester for months and then appear surprised when the matter becomes politically explosive.
The Commission on Administrative Justice has delivered a potentially consequential verdict on the long-running dispute between the Siaya County Assembly and the executive over public appointments.
Its five-page Advisory Opinion, dated August 10, 2026, is unusually blunt. It recommends the revocation of several appointments and extensions of tenure, calls for fresh recruitment in affected offices, recommends investigation of Governor James Orengo and former Finance CECM George Nying’iro by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, and proposes a special audit of financial transactions undertaken during Nying’iro’s disputed tenure.
The Commission also says the conduct examined amounts to maladministration, abuse of office and a gross violation of the Constitution and the law.
Those are serious findings.
ADVERTAnd they should not be trivialised merely because Kenya is drifting rapidly towards the 2027 General Election.
But there is another uncomfortable question that must be asked — and it is one that the Siaya County Assembly itself cannot escape.
Where was the Assembly when these alleged violations were taking place?
The House cannot simultaneously present itself as the ultimate guardian of constitutional oversight in Siaya and escape scrutiny over the manner and timing in which it exercised that mandate.
The Assembly deserves credit — but not a blank cheque
To be fair, the Assembly did not suddenly discover the Nying’iro matter on the date they called for Ombudsman intervention.
Its own records show that on May 21, 2026, the House passed a motion questioning the legality of Nying’iro’s continued occupation of the Finance docket after his contract had expired on March 31 and after the Assembly rejected his nomination on April 29.
The Assembly went further, directing the executive to stop allowing an unauthorised officer to perform the functions of Finance CECM and warning that it could notify financial institutions if the situation persisted.
On April 29, the House had already formally rejected Nying’iro’s nomination as CECM for Finance and Economic Planning.
And on May 21, it also questioned the constitutionality of the County Public Service Board and directed it to halt official business pending compliance with the law.
These actions matter.
They demonstrate that the Assembly did, in fact, raise the alarm before the Ombudsman issued its opinion.
It would therefore be unfair to portray the legislators as having been completely asleep at the wheel.
But that defence only goes so far.
Because the central question remains:
What did the Assembly actually do after its resolutions were allegedly disregarded?
That is where the House deserves a searching critique.
Oversight is not merely passing resolutions
A county assembly’s constitutional role is not exhausted by passing motions, issuing warnings and communicating resolutions.
Oversight must have consequences.
If an Assembly determines that an appointment is unlawful, it must be prepared to pursue every lawful mechanism available to enforce accountability.
If the executive disregards a resolution, the House must not simply issue another resolution.
If an officer continues exercising powers after the Assembly has rejected his appointment, the institution must move decisively to establish the legal consequences.
If public money is potentially being authorised by someone whose legal authority is disputed, the matter demands urgent intervention.
The Assembly’s own May resolution recognised precisely this danger in the Nying’iro case.
That makes the subsequent delay difficult to explain.
The Ombudsman now recommends a special audit covering financial transactions from April 1, 2026 — the very period during which the Assembly itself had already raised questions about Nying’iro’s authority.
That should make every Siaya resident pause.
Why should an issue of such constitutional and financial gravity require months of political and administrative manoeuvring before decisive action is pursued?
The timing creates an unfortunate political optics problem
This is where the Assembly needs to be especially careful.
Kenya is already entering the political atmosphere of 2027. Candidates are positioning themselves, alliances are shifting and every institutional confrontation involving elected leaders is increasingly interpreted through a political lens.
Consequently, even a perfectly legitimate accountability exercise can acquire political overtones if it is pursued late, inconsistently or selectively.
The Assembly cannot control the political calendar.
But it can control its own conduct.
And that is why the timing of this intervention creates an uncomfortable perception.
The Assembly’s formal request to the Commission was made on June 16, following a Committee on Appointments report dated June 10. The Ombudsman subsequently issued its opinion on August 10.
So, strictly speaking, this is not an August ambush.
The Assembly had begun acting in May and formally sought external guidance in June.
But neither does that completely eliminate the political optics.
The question is why the Assembly did not move with greater urgency immediately after its April and May resolutions if it genuinely believed constitutional violations were continuing.
Why allow contested appointments to remain politically and administratively alive?
Why wait for the dispute to evolve into a countywide political controversy?
Why seek the Ombudsman’s intervention only after the Assembly’s own resolutions appeared insufficient to change the situation?
Those questions are legitimate.
The Ombudsman has strengthened the Assembly’s case
That said, those questions should not be allowed to obscure the substance of the Commission’s findings.
The Commission did not merely rubber-stamp a political complaint.
It examined a series of appointments and identified what it described as a recurring pattern: failure to obtain mandatory Assembly approval, indefinite acting appointments, disregard of Assembly resolutions, appointment of individuals allegedly lacking prescribed qualifications and circumvention of the County Public Service Board.
Among the cases cited are Peter Asuke’s appointment as Acting Chief Officer for Tourism, Culture, Sports and Arts; the County Solicitor’s appointment as Acting County Attorney; George Adeya’s appointment as Director of the Governor’s Press; Elizabeth Adongo’s appointment as Acting County Secretary; and Nying’iro’s continued occupation of the Finance docket.
The Commission recommends revocation of the affected appointments and fresh lawful recruitment processes.
Most significantly, regarding Nying’iro, the Commission says the purported May 29 extension came after his contract had already expired and therefore could not lawfully revive it.
That is not a minor administrative disagreement.
It goes to the heart of the constitutional architecture of devolved government.
But an advisory opinion is not a substitute for due process
There is another important caution.
The Commission’s opinion should neither be ignored nor treated as though it were a final judgment of a court.
It is an authoritative constitutional and administrative intervention within the Commission’s mandate, and its recommendations carry considerable significance. But individual accountability must still follow the appropriate legal processes.
That distinction matters particularly because the opinion recommends referral of the Governor and Nying’iro to the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission.
A referral is an invitation to investigate.
It is not a conviction.
Similarly, allegations of unlawful appointments should not automatically become allegations of personal corruption.
The distinction between administrative illegality, maladministration, abuse of office and criminal culpability must be maintained.
The Governor cannot hide behind politics either
If Governor Orengo believes the Assembly and the Ombudsman have misinterpreted the law, he has every right to challenge the findings through the appropriate constitutional and legal channels.
But the executive cannot respond to an adverse oversight finding merely by dismissing it as political.
The Governor is the chief executive of the county, not the sole interpreter of the Constitution.
The Commission’s position is that County Assembly approval is a substantive constitutional safeguard where the law requires it — not an inconvenience that can be circumvented through acting appointments, extensions, redesignations or administrative devices.
That principle deserves protection regardless of who occupies the Governor’s office.
Today it may be Orengo.
Tomorrow it will be somebody else.
Institutions must outlive individuals.
And the Assembly must examine its own conduct
This is perhaps the most important lesson from the entire saga.
The Siaya County Assembly cannot demand executive accountability while exempting itself from institutional accountability.
If the Governor allegedly ignored its resolutions, what enforcement mechanisms did the House pursue?
If it believed Nying’iro had no lawful authority after March 31, why did it take until May to formally escalate the matter?
If the Public Service Board was allegedly improperly constituted, why was its status allowed to become a prolonged administrative dispute?
If the executive was repeatedly ignoring Assembly resolutions, why was the matter not escalated earlier through the courts, the Ombudsman, the Controller of Budget or other appropriate institutions?
These are not questions designed to weaken the Assembly.
They are questions designed to strengthen it.
An effective legislature must not merely speak loudly.
It must act early, consistently and predictably.
The danger of selective oversight
There is also a larger institutional danger.
If oversight becomes vigorous only when political relationships deteriorate, the public will inevitably suspect that constitutional principles are being used selectively.
That would be disastrous for devolution.
The Assembly must therefore demonstrate that the same standards it is applying to Orengo and his administration would apply to any Governor, regardless of political affiliation.
The test should be simple:
Was the law followed?
If not:
What remedy does the law provide?
And:
Was that remedy pursued promptly and consistently?
That is how an institution builds credibility.
Siaya does not need a constitutional cold war
The current confrontation should therefore not be reduced to “Assembly versus Governor.”
It is bigger than Orengo.
It is bigger than Nying’iro.
It is bigger than the 2027 elections.
It is about whether devolution in Siaya is governed by personalities or institutions.
The Ombudsman’s intervention offers an opportunity for a reset.
The Governor should comply with lawful requirements or challenge them through lawful channels.
The Assembly should exercise its oversight mandate firmly but without political selectivity.
The County Public Service Board should operate within the constitutional framework.
And independent agencies should investigate any matters properly referred to them without fear or favour.
But the Assembly must also learn a difficult lesson from this episode:
Constitutional oversight loses some of its moral force when it arrives late at the party.
The House was right to raise the alarm.
It was right to reject an appointment it considered unsuitable.
It was right to question the continued occupation of an office after the rejection.
And it was right to seek the Ombudsman’s intervention.
But if the executive genuinely defied the Assembly’s resolutions, the House should have moved with the urgency demanded by the Constitution — not allowed the dispute to simmer until the country is entering the charged political environment preceding the 2027 elections.
The verdict: neither witch-hunt nor whitewash
The Ombudsman’s findings should neither become a political weapon against Governor Orengo nor be dismissed as a political witch-hunt.
They should trigger something much more valuable:
institutional accountability.
And that accountability must run in both directions.
The executive must answer for alleged violations of the Constitution and the law.
The Assembly must answer for whether it exercised its oversight powers promptly, consistently and effectively.
The independent agencies must investigate where required.
And ultimately, the people of Siaya deserve something better than another political theatre.
They deserve a county where appointments are made on merit, constitutional safeguards are respected, public money is protected and institutions act before crises become political spectacles.
The real test of Siaya’s democracy is not whether the Assembly can win a confrontation with the Governor. It is whether both institutions can submit themselves to the same law they demand everyone else obey.
That is the standard that should survive long after the 2027 elections are over.
Lawrence Jeffrey
11th August, 2026
Siaya
