Rethink proposal to cap Inspector-General's retirement age at 60 years

Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja at the official opening of Regional Center on Small Arms (RECSA) meeting. [Jonah Onyango, Standard]

The proposal to fix the retirement age of the Inspector-General (IG) and Deputy Inspectors-General (DIGs) at 60 years, as contained in the National Police Service (Amendment) Bill 2025, is ill-thought-out, unnecessary, and ultimately harmful to the independence and effective functioning of the National Police Service (NPS).

The leadership of the NPS, like all other constitutional office holders, must be accorded the space and stability to execute their mandate without undue political pressure or arbitrary restrictions.

At the helm of the Service, wisdom, experience, and strategic insight are essential tools required to navigate the increasingly complex nature of modern policing.

Creating an artificial age ceiling risks weakening this leadership, politicising the Service, and exposing national security to further vulnerabilities.

Both the Constitution and the National Police Service Act provide clear, robust, and comprehensive mechanisms for the removal of constitutional office holders. Age limit is not among them. Introducing it now—specifically for the IG and DIGs suggests an attempt to interfere with the independence of the NPS and to weaken its leadership through legislative engineering rather than lawful constitutional processes.

The continuous pressure, political contestations, and targeted attempts to manipulate the leadership of the NPS pose a grave danger to a nation whose security framework is already strained.

The NPS remains one of the few independent institutions that has survived repeated attempts at political capture. Subjecting its leadership to shifting political interests through arbitrary amendments threatens to erode this independence permanently.

Parliament must uphold the integrity of existing laws and allow the current constitutional and statutory frameworks governing the NPS to operate as intended. Where removal or accountability mechanisms are needed, the Constitution already provides detailed procedures. The question then is: Why introduce an age limit specifically for the IG and DIGs when other constitutional office holders operate without one? What national interest is served by singling out the police leadership?

Four-year term

The retirement ages for heads of various constitutional and public offices in this country vary by office. Not all are set in stone. For instance, judges, and this even includes the Chief Justice, constitutionally retire at 70 years of age but may choose retirement any time after 65.

The retirement age for Vice Chancellors in public universities is 75 years. Politicians have no retirement limits. In Japan and other first-world countries, 65 is often the statutory retirement age. What's so special about Kenya?

In addition, some Inspectors-General have been appointed close to or after the standard retirement age of 60. The appointing authority didn't use age as a barrier to their nomination. Japhet Koome was 60 at the time of his appointment in 2022.

The Constitution states that the Inspector-General serves a single four-year term and is not eligible for re-appointment, so what's the new obsession with age when Kenyans should be concerned about meritocracy, integrity and performance of whoever is appointed to head the police service? 

The internal and external battles that have repeatedly targeted the NPS have distracted the institution from its core mandate. This ongoing interference must come to an end. The current Bill proposing to fix the retirement age of the IG and DIGs amounts to intimidation and deliberate disruption. It undermines the leadership’s ability to operate independently and effectively and should therefore be stopped.

A strong, independent, and stable NPS is central to national security. Legislative amendments that are clearly politically driven will compromise the independence the National Police Service enjoys, directly or indirectly, and must be rejected.

As much as Kenyans tend to politicise everything, let's stop, think and be logical. The NPS is too important to be politicised.