President William Ruto utilized the 63rd Madaraka Day festivities in Wajir County to clarify his rationale for eliminating long-standing impediments that prevented Northern Kenyans from acquiring national identity cards and birth certificates.
Addressing attendees at the national event held at Orahey Grounds, the President shared the narrative of Bakaja Ibrahim Hassan, a Wajir East resident, to demonstrate the difficulties many regional Kenyans have endured for years in obtaining essential citizenship documentation.
The President explained that Hassan, born in Wajir during the early 1960s to parents who were also county natives, faced repeated challenges whenever he sought a national identity card. Despite his Kenyan citizenship, he encountered additional scrutiny, was required to submit supplementary paperwork, and underwent extensive vetting procedures that frequently resulted in him being transferred between various government offices without resolution.
According to Ruto, Hassan’s predicament reflected the experience of hundreds of thousands of Northern Kenya residents who, for over six decades, had to demonstrate their citizenship through a system he characterized as marked by suspicion, ethnic profiling, and bureaucratic obstacles.
The President stated that this practice conflicted with the Constitution, which ensures all Kenyans receive equal protection, dignity, and legal treatment irrespective of their ethnicity, religion, or place of residence.
He highlighted that this was the motivation behind his February 2025 signing of the Presidential Proclamation on Registration and Issuance of Identity Cards and Birth Certificates in Northern Kenya and other border counties, which effectively terminated discriminatory vetting protocols.
The President noted that the reforms were already yielding positive results, pointing to Abdirahman Ali Osman and Maryam Isaak Mohamed, both born in Wajir County in 2007, who obtained their national identity cards upon reaching adulthood without facing extra documentation demands or special vetting processes.
However, Ruto stressed that the policy modification was not designed to enable non-citizens to fraudulently obtain Kenyan identification documents.
He affirmed that national identity cards would continue to be issued exclusively to legitimate Kenyan citizens, adding that the government’s dedication to inclusion and equal treatment would be harmonized with the imperative to protect national security and maintain the integrity of Kenya’s identification framework.