Johnson Sakaja promised Nairobi order on two wheels — instead, his enforcement officers are running a roadside extortion racket
By Bernard Mithia
Johnson Arthur Sakaja arrived at City Hall in 2022 with one of the most decisive mandates Nairobi had produced in years — nearly 700,000 votes, a margin of more than 160,000 over his nearest challenger — and residents expected him to bring long-overdue order to a city that boda boda riders had, by any honest measure, turned into a daily hazard.
The chaos was real and well-documented. Riders terrorised motorists, used pavements as shortcuts, rode against traffic and, in the ugliest incidents, torched vehicles involved in accidents rather than allowing the law to take its course. Street justice had replaced traffic law. Something had to change.
Sakaja acted. Under Kenya Gazette Supplement No. 26, dated 11 December 2025, his administration introduced a boda boda compliance framework with teeth: annual parking fees of KSh10,000, mandatory branding requirements for delivery riders and an enforcement unit tasked with bringing the sector to heel. On paper, it was exactly what Nairobi needed. In practice, it has become something else entirely.
On any busy day in Nairobi today, boda boda riders can be observed speeding along pedestrian walkways, making illegal turns and riding on the wrong side of the road — in full view of the very enforcement officers deployed to stop them. The compliance unit has not tamed the sector. It has monetised it.
The pattern is consistent and brazen. County enforcement officers — the kanjo — impound motorcycles for genuine offences: wrong parking, pavement riding, failure to comply with branding requirements. But those motorcycles rarely reach county offices for formal fine processing. Instead, they are held in parking lots while negotiations take place. The going rate runs from KSh500 to KSh3,000, varying by offence, the seniority of the officer involved and, reportedly, the number of officials sharing the proceeds.
What is particularly striking is how sophisticated the operation has become. To avoid cash trails, some officers have reportedly set up till numbers and pay bill accounts for mobile payments, with transactions occasionally routed through street vendors operating informal M-Pesa points. This is not opportunistic corruption. It is organised.
There is a further layer that traps newer riders especially. Many of the motorcycles openly defying compliance regulations are, according to those familiar with the sector, owned by county officers, police officials or veteran riders who have cultivated working relationships with enforcement personnel. These motorcycles move through the city untouched. The result is a deliberately engineered environment where naive or newly arrived riders, unaware of these arrangements, follow what appears to be normal practice — only to find themselves targeted. The enforcement officer has been watching, waiting, the way a leopard waits in cover before it moves.
The financial cost to Nairobi County is significant. If the compliance framework were functioning as designed, the annual KSh10,000 parking fee alone — applied consistently across a sector that numbers in the tens of thousands — would generate substantial revenue for the county. Add branding fees and penalty collections and the figures become considerable. Instead, that money is being diverted into private pockets before it reaches a single county account.
The damage is not only fiscal. The boda boda sector remains dangerous, undisciplined and contemptuous of traffic law — not despite enforcement, but in some respects because of it. When the people tasked with upholding a framework are the primary beneficiaries of its failure, the framework cannot work. Riders who might otherwise comply have little incentive to do so when the alternative is a negotiated payment on the roadside.
Sakaja inherited a city with enormous expectations riding on his administration. Nairobi had watched the turbulence of the Mike Sonko years, endured the instability of an impeachment and a prolonged period of uncertain governance, and placed considerable faith in a governor who projected competence and vision. The boda boda compliance sector was an early test of whether that faith was warranted.
The compliance unit still has time to demonstrate its purpose. But that will require the governor to look beyond the gazette notice and confront what is actually happening on Nairobi’s streets — where his enforcement officers are not enforcing the law, but profiting from its absence.
Bernard Mithia Senior advisor, Strategic partnerships Exponential international.
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