Okiya Omtatah Leads Fierce Constitutional Revolt Against Ruto’s Covert Legislative Coup

NAIROBI, October 23 – Busia Senator Okiya Omtatah has added his voice to the growing outrage over President William Ruto’s quiet signing of eight contentious laws, a move he calls a “constitutional betrayal.” Among them is the Computer Misuse and Cybercrime (Amendment) Act, 2024, now suspended after civil rights groups challenged it in the High Court.

On the morning that changed Kenya’s political story, President Ruto received the earth-shattering news of opposition leader Raila Odinga’s death. Instead of first telling a grieving nation, he chose a different path. He summoned parliamentary leaders to State House and quietly signed eight new laws, including the controversial cybercrime amendments. Only after securing his political agenda did he step before the nation to announce the death of the man who had spent his life defending its democracy.

To many Kenyans, the timing was no coincidence but a calculated act of mischief. The signing of these laws in the shadow of Odinga’s coffin was a chilling act; the exploitation of a national tragedy to advance a legacy that defies everything Odinga stood for: justice, accountability, and people-centered democracy. It was a cold political calculation that national grief over the death of the father of modern democracy would drown out outrage over a quiet power grab. In one stroke, the government turned a moment of unity into an opportunity for control.

The danger of this move was not sudden. It had been prefigured months earlier, in the aftermath of the Gen Z–led protests of June 2024 that shook the establishment and redefined civic resistance. The government’s intent to tighten digital control became clear soon after, when in June this year, software developer Rose Njeri was arrested for creating a simple online tool that let citizens automatically email Parliament’s Finance Committee to oppose the Finance Bill 2025. For that act of civic participation, she was branded a cybercriminal and charged with “interfering with the normal functioning of systems.” Though later released without charges, her ordeal offered a chilling preview of how peaceful dissent could be reframed as a digital crime.

Omtatah’s critique lays bare the government’s true intent. He has dissected the eight laws Ruto signed that day, finding three to be clearly unconstitutional. His analysis shows how, even in a moment of mourning, the government chipped away at Kenya’s democratic foundations, from digital freedoms to land rights and control of public assets.

The Computer Misuse and Cybercrime (Amendment) Act, 2024, signed into law by President Ruto on October 15, is now suspended following a court order. The suspension came after a coalition of civil rights groups and opposition leaders filed a constitutional petition arguing that parts of the new law threaten freedom of expression and privacy. The government, on the other hand, insists the amendments are essential to combat cyber fraud, online extremism, and rising digital insecurity.

Senator Okiya Omtatah has sharply criticized the law, saying it “dismally fails to strengthen the cybercrime law.” In his words, “It is bad law to the extent that it uses vague definitions that introduce ambiguous and overly broad offences which rogue officials can invoke to limit the freedom of expression, media freedom, and access to information by criminalising speech, opinion, or commentary critical of influential individuals or institutions.”

The law’s most dangerous weapon, he argues, lies in the powers granted to the National Computer and Cybercrimes Coordination Committee (NC4), allowing it to block entire websites and apps such as X, Facebook, or WhatsApp for loosely defined “unlawful activities” or “cultism.” Omtatah points to the fatal flaw in Section 6(1) (ja), which fails to determine who must prove that a site is guilty before it is shut down. “The new Section is vague and, therefore, void for not determining who proves that a website or application promotes unlawful activities,” he notes, warning that this lets the NC4 “usurp the mandate of the courts.”

He further highlights contradictions within the law, sections that clash with one another and confuse jurisdiction. One clause grants NC4 broad powers to censor, while another assigns similar powers to the courts. In his words, this creates “internal chaos” within the law itself. Omtatah also points to a disturbing moral inconsistency, where the section on “inappropriate sexual content involving minors” shockingly implies that some sexual content involving minors might be “appropriate.” “That is unacceptable!” he declares.

For Omtatah, the conclusion is clear: the law undermines constitutional rights and must be struck down. “I am heading to the High Court to have the offending law declared invalid, null, and void,” he says firmly.

The land and privatization power grab

However, Omtatah’s critique extends far beyond the digital sphere. His analysis uncovers a wider pattern, an assault on land rights and public assets hidden among the eight laws Ruto signed that day.

The National Land Commission (Amendment) Act, 2025, he argues, is a “desperate attempt by the National Assembly to defeat” an ongoing High Court case he filed (Constitution and Human Rights Petition No. E349 of 2021). The case challenges Parliament’s authority to impose timelines on the NLC’s constitutional mandate to address historical land injustices. Yet the new law reintroduces a five-year deadline to review all land grants from 1895 to 2010. “My position is that the new timelines are also unconstitutional,” Omtatah says, adding that he will amend his petition to have this new Act quashed.

Perhaps even more troubling is the Privatisation Act, 2025, which Omtatah describes as “unconstitutional and, therefore, invalid, null and void ab initio.” He points to Article 68(c) (iv) of the Constitution, which requires Parliament to enact laws that protect and conserve public land, not privatise it. Yet the new Act, he says, opens a legal backdoor for the sale of national assets.

Omtatah exposes dangerous loopholes: the law creates a new class of “government-linked corporations,” defined as those where the state owns less than 50% of shares. These corporations are explicitly exempted from the Act’s oversight. This, he warns, allows the government to quietly reduce its shares in companies like KenGen (currently 70%) to under 50%, and then sell them “without reference to the law.”

The law also exempts the sale of county government shares, paving the way for the disposal of assets such as hotels co-owned with the Kenya Tourist Development Corporation. Most disturbingly, Omtatah notes, the law was never presented to the Senate, even though it directly affects counties and public land, a “flagrant violation” of the Constitution’s bicameral principles.

Taken together, the three laws Omtatah is challenging he claims reveal a deliberate strategy. The cybercrime law silences the digital public square where dissent is organized. The land amendment sets an arbitrary deadline to bury historical injustices forever. The privatization law opens a legal path to sell the nation’s heritage with minimal oversight.

Each, on its own, he argues will weaken Kenya’s democratic fabric. Together, he claims they formed a blueprint for control, crafted not in open debate, but in the quiet shadow of mourning, at a moment when the country’s guard was down