On June 1 this year, President William Ruto stood before a crowd in the town of Wajir as the first Kenyan head of state to officiate the country’s national celebration of internal self-rule in the northeastern region. Ruto had come to Wajir with a basket laden with goodies. In February 2025, he had signed a presidential proclamation in the same city, abolishing a 60-year-old vetting requirement that had forced ethnic Somalis and other border communities to prove their Kenyan identity before the government would issue them an identity card. The extra vetting requirement dates back to security measures put in place after independence, when Somali irredentist claims sparked the Shifta War of 1963-1967.
In his address, Ruto recounted the story of a man born in Wajir in the early 1960s, to parents also born there, who had spent decades trying and failing to obtain a national identity card. The man, Bakaja Ibrahim Osman, was turned away each time, treated, as Ruto put it, “not as a Kenyan, but as a suspect.”
On June 1 this year, President William Ruto stood before a crowd in the town of Wajir as the first Kenyan head of state to officiate the country’s national celebration of internal self-rule in the northeastern region. Ruto had come to Wajir with a basket laden with goodies. In February 2025, he had signed a presidential proclamation in the same city, abolishing a 60-year-old vetting requirement that had forced ethnic Somalis and other border communities to prove their Kenyan identity before the government would issue them an identity card. The extra vetting requirement dates back to security measures put in place after independence, when Somali irredentist claims sparked the Shifta War of 1963-1967.
In his address, Ruto recounted the story of a man born in Wajir in the early 1960s, to parents also born there, who had spent decades trying and failing to obtain a national identity card. The man, Bakaja Ibrahim Osman, was turned away each time, treated, as Ruto put it, “not as a Kenyan, but as a suspect.”
The story landed well with the jubilant crowd, many of whom had similar firsthand accounts of suspicious treatment when they sought to acquire national IDs and registration documents. By the end of the event, Wajir’s council of elders, through Gov. Ahmed Abdullahi, had pledged to present Ruto with 100 camels. It was a gesture of gratitude that, in the pastoralist tradition of the Somali community, carries the weight of a lifetime.
Ruto’s dramatic outreach to northern Kenya reflects both a long-overdue attempt at inclusion and a clear-eyed political calculation. While many Somali Kenyans see it as genuine progress after decades of marginalization, critics argue that the move is driven more by Ruto’s need to secure new voting blocs as his support erodes in central Kenya.
Whether this overture will translate into lasting trust and equal citizenship—or remain a temporary electoral tactic—is a question that will likely be answered at the 2027 ballot box.
To really understand why Ruto’s recent moves matter and why they continue to raise eyebrows, it is necessary to go back to the first years after Kenya gained independence. That’s when ethnic Somalis in what was then called the Northern Frontier District pushed hard to secede and join Somalia.
The Kenyan government quickly branded the rebels “shifta”—the Somali term for bandit—in a move intended to strip the uprising of any political legitimacy. Starting in November 1963, the military cracked down: The ensuing campaign included aerial bombings as well as the forced settlement of pastoralists and the killing of their livestock.
In 1967, a cease-fire was signed—not with the insurgents themselves but between Nairobi and Mogadishu. As a result, the Kenyan government offered no concession to the suffering population in the country’s northeast. Indeed, a low-grade counterinsurgency continued. The regional state of emergency was not lifted until 1991, leaving the northeast under a separate legal regime from the rest of the country. According to one account, written by Samar al-Bulushi: “During this time, the military’s attempts to disarm locals took the form of state terror, with the massacre of at least 2,000 ethnic Somalis by the Kenyan military near Wagalla in 1984 as the most prominent example.”
During this time, Kenya’s national ID policies cemented Somalis’ status as second-class citizens. Unlike most Kenyans, ethnic Somalis seeking identity documents were required to appear before a multiagency security committee comprising officials from the National Intelligence Service, local chiefs, police, and community elders. Here, they were expected to provide additional documentation, including the national identity documents of their grandparents.
Critics long argued that the system effectively rendered many indigenous Kenyans stateless within their own country. Without an ID, voting, accessing public hospitals, opening a bank account, or enrolling in university became difficult pursuits that could stretch across years.
Every Kenyan administration until Ruto’s maintained this system. For his part, Ruto presented his new policy as the result of democratic principle. “We want the people of northern Kenya to feel equal to the rest of the country,” Ruto said when he signed the decree in Wajir on Feb. 5, 2025. “This country belongs to all of us, and we must develop all corners of Kenya equally.”
For the communities that had lived under the vetting regime for generations, the proclamation was historic, and the celebrations were genuine. Health Secretary Aden Duale, a prominent Somali Kenyan, told a gathering in Wajir County that under Ruto’s administration, Somalis in Kenya had gained unprecedented political freedoms, saying that “Somalis in Kenya have now gained independence.”
Yet this does not mean that Ruto’s act was as purely principled as he claimed. Ruto is also a politician who needs votes.
A May poll found that Ruto was the single most-preferred presidential candidate nationally, but with his support only at 24 percent. Meanwhile, three-quarters of Kenyans surveyed backed other candidates or remained undecided.
Making matters worse, Ruto’s governing arrangement with the late Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) has run into political headwinds following Odinga’s death in October. Factional battles have broken out inside ODM, with some powerful figures now actively opposing the coalition and Ruto’s reelection ambitions. Adding to these challenges, in central Kenya—a region that Ruto once dominated—he’s now locked in a tough fight with his former deputy, Rigathi Gachagua.
Against this political pressure, the registered voters in Mandera, Wajir, Garissa, Isiolo, and Marsabit now look like a valuable prize that Ruto is chasing hard. Opposition leader Kalonzo Musyoka, a former vice president, has been very blunt in his criticism, claiming that Ruto scrapped the old vetting rules specifically to pull in more northern votes for 2027.
“This guy [Ruto] has developed cold feet,” Kalonzo scoffed. “These people think they can earn votes here and there, dishing out IDs willy-nilly.”
Northeastern leaders have pushed back with equal force, arguing, understandably, that justice does not become less just because it happens to arrive at an electorally convenient moment. What’s more, they question whether justice has truly been delivered.
An investigation published in December by Kenya’s Streamline News found that abolishing the vetting committees had not, in practice, freed applicants from having to pay for their documents. It had simply changed who was charging them. A 19-year-old student in Garissa identified only as Abdi described waiting six months on a registration slip that proved to be useless.
“The government said the vetting is over,” he said. “But the officer at the desk says the system is ‘hanging.’ The man outside says for KES 15,000, the system will work instantly.” A Directorate of Criminal Investigations operation confirmed the scale of the problem, leading to the arrest of 26 officials accused of issuing genuine documents to unverified individuals for cash.
Scandals such as this have led researchers at the Social Science Research Council’s Kujenga Amani project to argue that Ruto’s proclamation is merely the opening of a harder conversation. They believe that unless Kenya dismantles “the entire architecture of suspicion” built around its Somali citizens over a century, citizenship will continue to be experienced as conditional, even if the paperwork is formally easier to obtain.
Thus, it is a positive sign that Ruto’s overtures to the northeast extend beyond the ID reform. He made history by choosing Wajir to host this year’s Madaraka Day self-rule celebrations. He has also significantly increased the visibility of Somali Kenyan politicians within his cabinet and government, appointing several to prominent positions. On the development front, Ruto’s regime has rolled out several high-profile infrastructure pledges, most notably the nearly $800 million Isiolo-Wajir-Mandera road project.
Taken together, this full-court press is both highly visible and clearly deliberate. The opposition reads it as a ploy to win the region’s votes, but Ruto’s northeastern supporters see it as long overdue recognition from the government.
Ruto is likely to step up his outreach to northern Kenya between now and the August 2027 election. This could mean more development promises, extra cabinet posts for Somali leaders, and faster work on big projects. What happens next will probably depend on whether these efforts pay off at the ballot box. If he sees strong backing in by-elections or polls, he’ll likely offer even more going forward. But if the region responds coolly, he may slow down or attach stricter conditions to future pledges.
In the end, the success of Ruto’s campaign to reconcile with Kenya’s Somali minority will likely hinge more on politics than principle.