Omtatah demands deeper eCitizen probe after recent damning report
By Paulette Mboga, August 12, 2025Busia Senator Okiya Omtatah has faulted the recent audit of the government’s eCitizen platform, calling it superficial and insufficient to uncover the true extent of possible financial irregularities.
Speaking in a TV interview on Tuesday, August 12, 2025, on the state of public accountability, Omtatah claimed that the Auditor-General’s review was limited to examining financial records and failed to investigate the digital systems at the heart of the platform’s operations.
“An audit needs to be done for the eCitizen platform, and there are young Kenyans who have said that, given a chance, they would tear it apart and find out how much has been stolen from the public,” Omtatah said. He insisted that a genuine digital audit would require probing the algorithms and backend systems to detect hidden losses, which may exceed what appears in official records.
Calls for accountability
Omtatah argued that the fight against corruption has been weakened by institutional shielding, pointing to the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) as an example. He said that while the constitution allows Parliament to create special police forces, they must be placed under the command of the Inspector General to ensure operational independence and effectiveness.
He criticised what he described as a political culture of mismanagement, where public funds are misappropriated, crises are manufactured, and the government then struggles to fix problems it created. “Why create a budget you cannot finance?” he asked, warning that the misuse of public resources has reached levels that threaten the country’s stability.
The senator further accused both county and national governments of failing to hold officials accountable for theft, creating an environment where graft thrives unchecked. He said the theft of public funds has become an “existential threat” to the republic, urging urgent and far-reaching reforms to restore transparency and trust in governance.
Omtatah’s remarks come amid heightened public scrutiny of the eCitizen platform, which has become a central hub for government services and revenue collection. Concerns over its oversight and security have fueled calls for more comprehensive audits to ensure that all funds are properly accounted for and that the system is safeguarded against both internal manipulation and external cyber threats.