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Mystery of President Ruto’s security blunders as IG Kanja awaits report
Presidential guards restrain a man who tried to force his way onto the dais where President Ruto was addressing residents of Wajir on Thursday.
What you need to know:
- Two recent incidents in quick succession in Mombasa and Wajir saw intruders reach within arm’s length of the President.
- Hours after the Wajir incident, the police boss announced that he had formed a team to probe the security lapse.
- Ruto intervened in both incidents and asked the security personnel to release the individuals, promising to meet with them later to address their issues.
If an ongoing audit uncovers gaps that have repeatedly allowed members of the public to sneak past thick layers of trained officers and get within arm’s reach of the Head of State, President William Ruto’s security detail will undergo a second overhaul in recent weeks.
On Monday, February 16, 2026, Inspector-General of Police Douglas Kanja is expected to receive a report on the probe by senior officers, along with recommendations to tighten security.
The audit follows two breaches in quick succession in Mombasa and Wajir, where two individuals approached the President before being restrained by his final line of defence.
Dr Ruto intervened in both incidents and asked the security personnel to release the individuals, promising to meet with them later to address their issues. While some experts see this as enthusiastic people simply seeking the President’s attention, others have noted the risks that expose Kenya’s most guarded VIP.
“They (the audit team) were given three days. Today is just the first day. It is best to give them that time, because this is not the first time it (breach of the President’s security) has happened. After the team completes the investigation, they will talk to the Inspector-General, who will then make the findings public,” police spokesperson Muchiri Nyaga told the Nation on Friday.
State House spokesman Hussein Mohamed curtly stated that “the Inspector-General of Police was handling the matter”, offering no further details.
For Mr Charles Kases Losur, the incidents in Mombasa and Wajir mark the start of a challenging period that he could not have anticipated when he took over as operations lead for President Ruto’s security in and out of State House on October 9, 2025.
Just a week after his appointment, Ramadhan Matanka, a GSU officer guarding the State House gate, was killed by someone believed to be his friend.
Just five months before Losur replaced Ernest Cheruiyot as head of the Presidential Guard Company — popularly known as the G Company in security circles — Dr Ruto was in Migori when a man appeared to throw a shoe at the Head of State.
Three people were arrested following the incident but were later released. One of them claimed that the shoe had slipped from his grasp accidentally and that there had been no malicious intent against Dr Ruto.
In an interview, Byron Odera, an international close-protection Level 4 expert and former special forces officer, said that the presidential security team is so layered with diverse and elite experts that it should be able to detect and neutralise breaches before they happen.
Presidential guards restrain a man who tried to force his way onto the dais where President Ruto was addressing residents of Wajir on Thursday.
He explains that even when intruders appear harmless — barefoot men, self-styled messengers, or citizens desperate for a word — the implications can be grave. Security, Mr Odera notes, operates on two levels: reality and perception. A breach that appears minor to the public may be perceived very differently by hostile individuals observing from a distance.
“If people can run towards the President repeatedly, others may perceive weaknesses, vulnerabilities that can be exploited,” he says. “You cannot allow such a precedent to take root.”
Ordinarily, a sitting President in Kenya moves around with tens of police officers.
On Thursday, a particular moment in President Ruto’s visit to Wajir lasted only seconds, but it was enough to freeze a crowd, rattle a security cordon and remind the country how thin the line can be between power and peril.
President Ruto was mid-speech, standing at the dais, when a man suddenly broke from the crowd and ran towards him.
The security officers reacted instinctively, running forward to restrain the intruder as the President paused, eyes fixed on the unfolding scene. Then, in a gesture that has become characteristic of his public persona, Mr Ruto waved them down.
That brief moment, which drew a lot of the country’s attention, has now become the basis of an audit that could see some individuals removed from President Ruto’s protection detail.
Hours after the incident, IG Kanja announced that he had constituted a team to investigate the security lapse, with police sources now adding that if any weakness is found in the President’s chain of protection, those responsible for the specific docket will be handed other duties far away from the Head of State.
The Thursday incident was quickly defused, but it did not occur in isolation. On February 6, another man had dashed towards the President at the Jomo Kenyatta Showground in Mombasa, interrupting a function where Sh147 million was being disbursed to thousands of youth under the Nyota programme.
That episode unfolded almost theatrically. President Ruto had casually asked the crowd, “Where is the last person?” Moments later, a barefoot man emerged, sprinting towards the podium. Security officers closed in, only for the President to again intervene, engaging the intruder in a light-hearted exchange that drew laughter from the audience.
The man, who identified himself as Jeremiah, told the President he had followed him from town to town — Kisumu, Nakuru, now Mombasa — driven, it seemed, by a need to be heard. He was not a beneficiary of the programme. Eventually, he was gently escorted away, the President promising to “deal with his case” later.
President William Ruto accompanied by his deputy Kithure Kindiki in Wajir county during the last event of phase one of the Nyota Programme.
In Migori last year, a shoe was thrown at the Head of State as he addressed a public rally in Kuria West, a jarring moment that forced security agencies to immediately tighten protection around Ruto and rethink how he would engage crowds for the rest of the tour.
Although some in the crowd view the scenes as almost comic, security analysts say it is a worrying pattern, which is repeated, increasingly casual breaches of the security bubble around the country’s most protected individual.
Near-hits from the past
The country’s presidential history is dotted with incidents that, in hindsight, read like warnings ignored. On April 1, 2004, during the State Opening of Parliament, a stranger in a pale cream suit calmly tagged onto a procession of clergy and judges and walked straight into the Chamber. Mr Peter Mwai, an estate agent, took a seat barely six feet from President Mwai Kibaki, mingling freely with senior clerics and judges throughout the two-hour ceremony.
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It was only later that the magnitude of the breach dawned on Parliament. Then Speaker Francis ole Kaparo described it as a “terrible security lapse,” expressing disbelief that an unauthorised person could penetrate the heart of the House so effortlessly.
Four years later, on December 11, 2008, Kenya watched another stunning lapse play out live on TV during Jamhuri Day celebrations at Nyayo National Stadium. As President Kibaki delivered his address, a man rose from the VIP dais and began shouting. Security officers swarmed him, cutting short the President’s speech and dragging the intruder away. The man was Fredrick Odhiambo, a little-known activist who would later recount, in chilling detail, how he had planned his mission alone, waking before dawn, dressing in a suit and blending in seamlessly with ministers and MPs.
He had walked past sniffer dogs, sat just metres from the President for hours, even exchanged greetings with a presidential guard seated two chairs away. No one questioned him. No one stopped him.
When security finally realised what had happened, their embarrassment, Mr Odhiambo claimed, turned violent. He ended up in hospital, under police guard, still insisting he had only wanted to deliver a message about the cost of living, MPs paying taxes and the implementation of the Waki Report.
One of the darkest and most consequential security breakdowns in Kenya’s post-independence history occurred on October 25, 1969, when President Jomo Kenyatta travelled to Kisumu to officially open the New Nyanza General Hospital, a flagship project closely associated with his bitter political rival, Kenya People’s Union leader Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.
What began as a ceremonial visit quickly descended into chaos after the two exchanged sharp words, triggering a scuffle that spilled into the crowd. As hostility surged and stones were hurled towards the presidential dais, security personnel opened fire while rushing to extract the President, leaving more than 10 people dead as the motorcade sped out of Kisumu, a moment that remains a chilling reminder of how swiftly a public political event can turn deadly when security, politics and mass emotion collide.
What is striking about the recent incidents is not just that they happened, but how quickly they were absorbed into the rhythm of public life. Yet, according to security experts, this very normalisation is what should worry Kenyans the most.
Beyond them are layers the public rarely sees: advance teams, intelligence collectors, residential security units, Mr Odera explained.
Long before a presidential visit, advance parties sweep venues, profile attendees, assess threats and vulnerabilities. They sit in hotels, frequent local joints, quietly gathering intelligence. Names are vetted, routes sanitised, contingencies planned. It is, Mr Odera says, a forensic process driven by one overriding imperative: the President’s life.
“When something goes wrong at the dais, it is never just an isolated failure,” he says. “It points to gaps somewhere along that chain.”
Disruption itself, he adds, is a risk. A halted speech, a startled principal, a moment of confusion — these are precisely the conditions in which more sinister threats thrive.
Yet Mr Odera’s analysis goes beyond tactics and protocols. He locates part of the problem in the society that produces the intruders themselves.
Many of those who have breached presidential security, he observes, were not armed or violent. They were driven by aspiration and a desire to be elected, appointed, heard, helped. In their minds, the President embodied the only doorway left open.
“When citizens believe the only way to access opportunity is by touching the hem of the President’s garment, then we have failed elsewhere,” he says.
Drawing on sociological theory, Mr Odera points to the work of Robert Merton on deviance, arguing that when socially approved goals such as wealth, power, or recognition become unattainable through legitimate means, people resort to illegitimate ones.
In the past, such lapses have occurred in and outside State House.
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