Murkomen explains how police can rein in on boda boda menace
By Mabonga Makhanu, September 16, 2025Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen has stated that boda bodas should be organised into Saccos as the best way to regulate the sector since the police alone cannot manage them.
While speaking during an interview on a local media station on Monday, September 16, 2025, the Cabinet Secretary called for urgent regulation of the sector, which is growing at a fast pace, making it hard for law enforcement officers alone to manage.
“If we leave this purely to the police, the police can’t manage the sheer number of boda bodas in the country. It will be required that we reduce it to a smaller unit,” Murkomen stated.
With the surge in criminal activities where people use boda bodas to advance crime, Murkomen suggested that riders be organised into Saccos and acquire operation licences as Saccos so that it becomes easier to trace perpetrators in case of offences.
“Once you put them in Saccos and they acquire licenses as a Sacco, it will be punitive for a member if he commits an offence, as it can transfer to the Sacco as a whole,” he said.
He went on to state that since transport is a shared function between the counties and the national government, he urged the devolved units to ensure that county transport committees are functional.
Complete overhaul in Bodaboda
He further stated that the need for an overhaul in the boda boda sector, including riders putting on uniforms while carrying out their activities, is meant to prevent them from being used by politicians for their own interests, citing an incident in Kisii County where, according to Murkomen, boda boda riders were given uniforms by politicians and branded their names to inflict pain on those who do not support them.
Additionally, he suggested the need to invest in technology by the Ministry of Transport to ensure digital enforcement.
“Going forward, we should invest in technology so that there is digital enforcement, where the Ministry of Transport was working on the Integrated Transport System (ITS) that was supposed to be used in the management of traffic offences. For example, if you are not wearing a helmet, you get instant fines, and it has already received funding after I talked to the president,” Murkomen stated.
This comes in the wake of the death of Advocate Kyalo Mbobu, who was murdered by an assassin on a motorcycle. Murkomen said that had the sector been properly regulated, such incidents could not have happened.