A growing storm is brewing around the recruitment process for the advertised positions for State Counsel at the Office of the Attorney General, following a string of allegations pointing to deep-seated irregularities, selective sidelining, and political interference that have left qualified but unconnected candidates feeling not only disenfranchised, but viscerally betrayed by a system they once trusted to reward merit.
Applicants who participated in interviews conducted earlier this year now allege that final appointments have been quietly issued to names absent from the original shortlist.
Whispers of influence from politically connected quarters, including top government circles, have lent weight to a broader narrative that the selection process was compromised long before the first interviews were held.
The disillusionment has been all the more pronounced given the historic nature of Dorcas Oduor’s appointment as Attorney General, a development initially interpreted as signalling a shift towards greater professionalism, procedural integrity, and a broader commitment to fairness in public sector recruitment.
What began as a formal public call for applications, promising transparency and equal footing, now appears, in the eyes of many, to have masked a parallel process dictated by lineage and loyalty.
Several candidates say they prepared extensively, travelled at great cost, and placed professional hopes on a recruitment drive that, in retrospect, appears to have been symbolic at best.
What is now taking shape, in murmurs exchanged across digital spaces and hushed phone calls between disillusioned peers, is not merely a wave of routine dissatisfaction, but a groundswell of quiet rage from law graduates and early-career legal minds who once clung (perhaps naively) to the belief that technical preparedness, academic merit, and integrity would be sufficient currency to secure entry into the state’s legal machinery, only to discover that the gates of public legal service remain largely tilted in favour of the well-placed and politically adjacent.
Among the growing number of applicants who underwent the rigorous motions of formal application, travelled across counties at personal cost, and submitted themselves to structured interviews with a measure of hope and belief in the procedural dignity of the process, there is now spreading a shared ache, sharpened not simply by exclusion, but by the creeping realisation that their exclusion was never truly contingent on performance, competence, or preparedness, but on the invisible arithmetic of surname, social alignment, and backroom familiarity with those pulling unseen strings.
Below is a glimpse into what some candidates are now saying.
“Hi Cyprian. Please, please address this. The OAG had advertised openings for State Counsel. The shortlisted candidates, including myself, went for interview sometime in February. Imagine, most people who were not ever called for the interview have been issued with offer letters. Most are politicians’ kids. The whole process was political, and there was apparent interference from State House. Sasa sisi watoto wa raia ndo tunafaa kufutilia hizo kazi Ruto ana-advertise, yet we don’t even have the finances. Aki, this is so heartbreaking, let’s just burn this whole country to the ground. I know that is off-topic from the current state of affairs, but so many terrible things are happening at once, and they all need to be brought to the attention of the public. Please, please, please, please, it is disheartening.”
