We stand with you: The Standard speaks for Kenyans when no one else will

The first breath of 2025 carried the scent of innocent blood spilled. It was a year that began not with a resolution, but with a reckoning — one that The Standard had already set in motion.

In the opening days, our front page declared a “Ward of Death” at Kenyatta National Hospital, where Edward Maigua’s throat was slit months after Gilbert Kinyua met the same fate. This was more than a crime story; it was unfathomable. How could a killer roam with impunity inside a centre of healing? Our investigation exposed a collapse of security and morality so profound it suggested the institution itself was terminally ill.

By a cruel symmetry, as 2025 began, it would also end with the government’s own watchdog delivering a verdict that read like a coroner’s report on the hospital. In a damning December investigation carried by The Standard titled A Sick Hospital, the Commission on Administrative Justice — citing our reporting — declared a “systemic service delivery failure” at KNH.

Every detail of our journalism was vindicated. The hospital was “strangled by a government directive”, its lifeblood of funds trapped in a Treasury chokehold, leaving patients surviving on rations of green grams and cabbage. Diagnostic laboratories stood like modern tombs — useless without reagents. The Ombudsman wrote to the Health Cabinet Secretary, the Principal Secretary and KNH management seeking answers.

Our 2025 coverage opened with a headline that captured the national mood: Kenya was “A Disturbed Nation”. We published the Infotrak survey that stripped State House of its spin, showing that 57 per cent of Kenyans believed the country was on the wrong path. We gave statistical weight to the daily agony of food insecurity, endless hospital queues, over-taxation, corruption, poor healthcare and youth unemployment. The Anglican Church echoed our pages when Archbishop Jackson Ole Sapit rebuked the government for “hiding behind statistics while wananchi remain trapped in economic despair”.

As Kenyans consumed the theatre of high politics, a different machinery was grinding beneath. We broke the story of the “Handshake Enigma”. “That a deal has been reached between Raila Odinga and President William Ruto is obvious,” we wrote. “However, Raila, true to character, was talking tough on the country’s direction, confounding ODM supporters.”

This elite choreography had real victims. We reminded the nation of those “Abandoned by the State”. In a searing follow-up to the youth protests against the Finance Bill 2024 — protests whose blood watered the soil of reform — we wrote: “It was the youth protests that birthed the so-called broad-based government, along with promises of reparations and medical aid. Yet months later, President William Ruto and opposition leader Raila Odinga are sharing the spoils of power as some of those shot by police waste away in homes and hospitals without care.”

In February, we shifted our lens to business and human rights abuses. As the State fortified its political apparatus, the economy it was meant to steward was being choked. We published a definitive investigation — Companies’ Graveyard — that became a landmark in financial journalism.

Provoked by presidential dismissal from a London podium, where Ruto mocked media reports of companies fleeing Kenya, we responded not with opinion but with forensic evidence. “The Standard can authoritatively confirm that more than 10 multinationals have closed shop, with many more forced to restructure or scale back due to a toxic business environment, punishing taxes, high electricity costs, unpredictable policies and political volatility.”

We branded this dismissal his “trademark playbook: dishing out alternative facts”. The human cost was not abstract. We counted it like a war toll: 5,567 jobs lost. The number stood like a tombstone — a chilling epitaph for livelihoods destroyed.

That same month, we turned to physical violence and the protectors who had become predators. In Trained to Kill, we reported that local and international human rights bodies were rating Kenya poorly due to rising police killings and abductions. We published a magistrate’s words that seared the national conscience: the police force “is trained to kill people, not animals”. We asked the question haunting millions: should citizens, out of fear of those meant to protect them, remain silent and accept State excess as normal?

March exposed rot at the heart of the State. Our headline was blunt: Cartels’ Hell-hole. We revealed chaos in the Ministry of Health, where frantic reshuffles — three Cabinet Secretaries and five Principal Secretaries in two years — were a placebo, not a cure. The transition from NHIF to SHA had left a Sh104 billion hole marked by skewed payments and poor service delivery. Insiders told us the cartels were untouchable because “the problem originates from State House”.

We put a human face to the dysfunction: a “Clueless Health CS”. Deborah Barasa appeared ill-prepared and evasive before the press and the Senate. Her incoherent responses, printed verbatim, symbolised an office out of its depth while people died.

April peeled back the palace intrigue poisoning governance. In State House Rogues, we profiled shadow figures wielding unaccountable power. Farouk Kibet and Dennis Itumbi, we reported, had become inseparable from the President, operating with an entitlement that unnerved insiders. Former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua described them as “masterminds of self-serving schemes veiled by State authority”.

May delivered a brutal juxtaposition. We reported justice in a terror case — Guilty: Payback Time for DustiD2 Terrorists — alongside a different terror: KPA Billions Loot. Our verdict was a single word: “SCANDALOUS!” As Kenyans struggled to eat, the government spent millions of dollars on Washington lobbyists to sanitise its image amid US scrutiny over abductions, killings and links to Sudanese warlords.

June mourned a broken dream. In End of Free Education, we traced the rise and slow demise of one of Kenya’s boldest social gains. Chronic underfunding and rising costs were dragging the dream towards extinction, even as officials issued contradictory reassurances detached from reality.

That same month, we spoke truth to power over police killings. Under Deputy Inspector General Eliud Lagat’s watch, a force steeped in impunity abducted and killed Albert Ojwang’ in Central Police Station. The doctrine of command responsibility made the outcome predictable. We called it plainly: Killed by Police.

Amid institutional failure, we celebrated courage. In Magnificent Duo, we saluted Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu and Controller of Budget Margaret Nyakang’o for standing firm as Parliament aligned itself with the Executive.

In July, we turned from systems to souls, telling a human story that pierced the heart of every family. “Mother’s tears, prayer.” For “15 years, Dorothy Kweyu waited—not by counting days, but by enduring absences. Her son vanished into a Saudi prison, sentenced to death, his name whispered in family prayers but never spoken too loudly in public.” We chronicled her “unendurable unanswered letters, false leads, and his aching absence.” His pending return was not a simple journey; it was “a resurrection of memory, loss, and a mother’s undying love.” This story put a human face on our, hard-hitting expose of the “Slave trade billions.” where through a New York Times Expose we uncovered how Kenyans are sold into slavery in Arab nations and the biggest beneficiaries are President Ruto’s family through their insurance firm and a handful of legislators in the national assembly.

We also shifted gears to the lawless chaos on our roads, a roaring metaphor for impunity itself. “Rogue ‘nganyas’.” We described how these matatus “roar through Nairobi’s streets like kings without crowns- with no number plates, no rules and no fear.” We exposed the engine of their immunity: they were “Backed by political muscle and hidden behind shell companies, these rogue vehicles are turning public transport into a circus of impunity.” And we named names, revealing the ultimate symbol of a two-tiered society: “the President’s son… George Ruto’s just launched Moody matatu now flouting the rules with regulators and traffic police turning a blind eye.” We called it what it was: “anarchy in motion” 

August delivered a profound humiliation to the administration, revealing its dwindling credibility. Our headline captured the national ridicule: “No thank you, Ruto.” We reported that “nine high-profile nominees have walked away from plum positions offered by the President, from ambassadorial seats to commission chairmanship.”

As schools reopened in September, we declared a state of emergency in the sector meant to forge the future. “Education system at a crossroads.” We listed the cascading crises: “Teacher shortages, incomplete classrooms, delayed funds, and nationwide safety concerns.” Over 1.5 million students were transitioning to Grade 9 under the stormy, confused rollout of the new CBC curriculum, with “Grieving families, students lead protests against abductions” outside the school gates. 

The digital realm, once promised as a gateway to efficient service, was exposed as a crime scene: e-citizen Ownership deceit. We published a “damning audit” that revealed the platform “may have hemorrhaged billions in public funds through shady contracts, untraceable payments, and unauthorised bank transfers.” Lawmakers, we reported, wanted the platform “scrapped, its contract with private vendor Webmasters Kenya Ltd terminated, and a probe launched into billions funneled through shadowy accounts.” The “digital transformation” was a digital heist. 

And the violence, never absent, took a new, brazen form. We reported on “Assassins on wheels,” detailing the execution-style murder of lawyer “Mathew Kyalo Mbobu… shot in the head by a gunman on a boda boda.” We called it “Nairobi’s new face of terror: gun toting assassins on motorbikes cutting down lawyers, MPs and businessmen in broad daylight – leaving a trail of blood, grief and unanswered questions.” It was a story of a “broken security system and a police force that appears clueless in the face of such brutality.”

October brought a shift in the nation’s soul. We announced with solemn, front-page grandeur: “Enigma bows out.” “Raila Amolo Odinga – freedom fighter, reformist, and the country’s most enduring opposition leader – died in India.” We wrote his epitaph, capturing his irreducible complexity: “a restless, brilliant, mercurial force whose life was a constant duet between destiny and defiance. He led, fought, reconciled and re-emerged time and again – a political phoenix in a nation that rarely forgives its own. Now, as the music fades, Kenya mourns the enigma whose silence leaves a huge void.” 

We also revisited one of our oldest and most impactful investigations, proving that some wounds never heal and some scams never end. “The  SHA Insurance rip-off.” We reminded Kenyans that for “thousands of county workers across Kenya, medical insurance cards are nothing more than worthless plastic.

Despite billions paid in premiums, hospitals are rejecting patients, forcing families into debt or despair.” We listed the damning figures like a prosecutor’s evidence, the astronomical sums paid for a “silent but deadly scam” orchestrated by rogue officials, brokers and insurers. 

Come November, With the 2027 elections already casting a long, dark shadow, we sounded a deafening alarm on the integrity of the very process meant to renew democracy. “Partisan IEBC.” We wrote that the reconstituted commission, meant to redeem a tainted agency, was “already struggling to shake off doubts but lodged its formation.” It had “cleared a UDA candidate despite EACC advice,” officials were “accused of bias,” and the Opposition was warning of “State-sponsored violence and poll manipulation.” We asked the pivotal question: “Can Chairperson Ethekon calm the swirling storm?”

While the people languished, the state mobilised not for service, but for control. In a chilling November exposé, we warned: “Dreaded chiefs back.” President Ruto had “resurrected the long feared imperial chief – arming administrators, handing them fresh battalions of officers, and restoring a command structure Kenyans thought they abolished years ago.” We decoded the propaganda, what State House hailed as ‘empowerment’ was, in the dusty villages, the return of village enforcers whose past brutality is etched in national memory. Our reporting connected the dots to the looming political horizon. 

On the global stage, Kenya’s domestic record—the very one we had documented daily—was now triggering grave international condemnation. “Ruto on US radar.” We revealed the “stunning rebuke” as the US Senate weighed stripping Kenya of its coveted “Major Non-Nato Ally status, just a year after granting the honour.”

The reasons, we reported, were “allegations of Nairobi’s ties to rogue armed groups, abductions and torture of civilians, and alignments with China, Russia, and Iran.” The proposed amendment demanded a “sweeping reassessment of US-Kenya military and intelligence ties—a potential diplomatic blow that could isolate President Ruto’s government.” We had become a pariah, and our journalism held the reasons why. 

From the Turkana massacre to youths trapped in Russia’s war, from foreign deserts to forgotten villages, The Standard did not look away.

Every headline, every name — Brigit Njoki, Agnes Wanjiru — was a voice restored. This was not mere reporting. It was a chronicle of a nation under siege, a testament to resilience, and an indictment of power that forgot its purpose.

Through noise, spin and suppression, The Standard never wavered. We faced the truth. We amplified the voiceless.
As long as Kenya lives, The Standard will bear witness.