IEBC

In a dramatic move that shocked Kenya’s political establishment Tuesday evening, newly appointed IEBC Chairman Erastus Ethekon orchestrated the unceremonious exit of Chief Executive Officer Hussein Marjan, bringing down the curtain on more than a decade of service in the controversial 399 days before his contract was due to expire.

The bloodless coup at Anniversary Towers culminated in five commissioners being urgently recalled from a week-long workshop in Naivasha on Monday for a crisis meeting that sealed Marjan’s fate, with the executive’s future dissected in sessions held both in his presence and behind closed doors.

Sources privy to the boardroom drama revealed that Ethekon, barely seven months into his tenure as chairman, had been methodically building a case against Marjan since the commission was fully constituted last July, focusing on procurement decisions made when commissioners were absent and questions around the extension of the controversial Smartmatic contract.

The final act played out with surgical precision. When Marjan learned his days were numbered, he approached Ethekon seeking a dignified exit. The chairman obliged, offering a written confirmation that the departure would be by mutual consent. But in a twist that stunned the commission, Marjan returned on Friday at 5pm armed with legal counsel and a counter-proposal demanding full payment through March 2027 and compensation for unused leave.

That move proved fatal. Ethekon convened an emergency session on Monday afternoon with five commissioners, deliberately excluding Vice Chairperson Fahima Araphat Abdallah who was attending to private matters. The session, fully minuted, became the formal basis for terminating Marjan’s contract and marked the point of no return.

Commissioner Alutalala Mukhwana was first to arrive at Tuesday’s concluding meeting that began at 3:30pm, followed by Commissioner Anne Nderitu and Professor Francis Aduol. By 5:36pm, the verdict was sealed. When Marjan appeared at reception around 6pm, he found media already gathered, tipped off about the seismic shift underway. His terse “Sorry, I’m not going to speak to the media” response betrayed the tension of a man whose career had just been demolished.

The catalyst for Marjan’s downfall was a perfect storm of opposition pressure and internal discontent. Opposition leaders led by Wiper’s Kalonzo Musyoka had spent weeks demanding his removal, accusing him of hastily renewing Smartmatic’s contract when the commission was not in office. The company, which supplied the Kenya Integrated Elections Management System kits for the 2022 polls, has been dogged by controversy across multiple countries.

“We cannot have free and fair elections with Marjan at the IEBC,” Kalonzo had thundered at a funeral in Machakos County in January. “When there was no commission in place, he moved very fast and renewed Smartmatic’s contract. When the new commissioners came in, they found that he had already renewed those contracts. It was an illegal act.”

DAP-Kenya leader Eugene Wamalwa went further, demanding not just Marjan’s exit but his prosecution for abuse of office. The opposition’s fury was amplified by explosive allegations from a former Venezuelan military intelligence chief linking Smartmatic to election manipulation in multiple countries.

But it was not just external pressure that sealed Marjan’s fate. Inside the commission, questions swirled around procurement decisions and an Auditor-General’s report that raised governance concerns. During one particularly brutal confrontation, a commissioner pointedly asked Marjan whether his continued stay was sustainable given that the entire commission had lost confidence in him.

The sticking point was the Smartmatic contract extension. Commissioners discovered that a two-year extension approved in 2024 to expire at the end of 2026 had been signed unilaterally by the CEO when commissioners were not in office. Under IEBC’s standard operating procedures, all purchases of strategic election materials including ballot papers, voter registration kits, and ballot boxes must receive commissioner approval.

When Marjan attempted in November 2025 to extend the framework agreement to allow purchase of new equipment, commissioners flatly rejected the move. That rejection, sources say, was the beginning of the end.

Marjan’s final hours at IEBC were a study in contrasts. On Monday, he reported for duty at 8am and left at 3pm. It remains unclear whether he attended the meeting that ratified his contract termination. By Tuesday evening, he was penning an emotional farewell to staff, thanking them for “over decade of invaluable experience in elections management.”

“As I move on, I do so wiser, enriched and deeply grateful,” Marjan wrote, his words carefully chosen to maintain the fiction of mutual consent even as the walls closed in around him.

The timing of Marjan’s exit, coming just 15 months before the 2027 General Election, has raised eyebrows about the wisdom of such upheaval at a critical moment. But Ethekon was unrepentant, framing the move as necessary for institutional reform.

“The changes are meant to enhance effectiveness, efficiency, transparency, and accountability of the secretariat in service delivery to the people of Kenya,” the chairman declared in his statement, promising that the commission would embark on “critical reforms within the Secretariat.”

For Marjan, who joined IEBC as Deputy Commission Secretary in March 2015 and rose to become CEO in March 2022 after serving nearly five years in an acting capacity, the fall from grace has been swift and stunning. He shepherded the commission through the tumultuous 2022 General Election and held the fort when the electoral body operated without commissioners for months.

But in the cutthroat world of Kenya’s electoral politics, past service counts for little when new power arrives with its own vision. Ethekon, the 48-year-old Turkana native and former county attorney, had made clear during his vetting that he intended to restore integrity and public confidence in the commission.

His first major act as chairman has sent an unmistakable message: there is a new sheriff in town at Anniversary Towers, and he answers to no one but the Constitution and the Kenyan people. Whether this shake-up will indeed enhance the commission’s credibility or plunge it into fresh turmoil ahead of 2027 remains to be seen.

The commission has promised to announce an interim replacement “in due course” while the recruitment process for a substantive CEO begins. Marjan’s deputies, Ruth Kulundu and Obadiah Keitany, are scheduled to exit in March and May 2027 respectively, raising questions about whether they too might face the axe as Ethekon moves to put his stamp on the secretariat.

As Marjan clears his desk and contemplates his next move, one fact is inescapable: his tenure, which began with such promise and survived years of political turbulence, ended not with a bang but with a carefully worded statement about “mutual consent” that fooled no one who watched the drama unfold over those fateful 48 hours.

The real question now is whether Ethekon’s bold move will indeed deliver the credible, transparent electoral process he has promised or whether it has simply opened a new chapter of instability at Kenya’s most critical constitutional commission.