Things are getting messy at Kenya’s Ministry of Education, there’s a quiet but heated power struggle going on, and it’s starting to show. At the centre of the drama is Education CS Julius Migos Ogamba, who seems to be getting sidelined by his own Principal Secretaries Prof. Julius Bitok (in charge of Basic Education) and Dr. Beatrice Inyangala (handles University Education).
The back-and-forth between them has left parents, students, and even MPs scratching their heads wondering: who’s actually in charge here?
In January, CS Ogamba came out guns blazing during the KCSE results announcement, warning schools to stop charging parents extra money some schools were demanding between KSh 9,000 and KSh 15,000. He promised tough action against schools fleecing parents.
But then in April, PS Bitok sent out his own circular telling schools to release KCSE certificates being held over unpaid fees. His directive didn’t even mention Ogamba’s earlier warning. So now, no one really knows who to listen to.
The confusion doesn’t stop there, a scandal involving fake “ghost schools” has just made things worse.
A whopping KSh 1.3 billion was reportedly sent to schools that don’t even exist—fake names, fake students, the whole thing cooked up in the education database system (NEMIS).
Ogamba said he’ll personally check if the schools exist, but insiders claim Bitok, who oversees NEMIS, is slow to share the needed data. It’s led to suspicions that the PS is covering something up.
Even the rollout of the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) is turning into a turf war. Ogamba has been pushing hard to keep Grades 7 to 9 in primary schools, backing the government’s reform plan. He’s been building classrooms and talking up progress.
But Bitok’s been busy talking about deploying teachers and fixing resource gaps without referencing the bigger CBC plan. Inyangala, meanwhile, is doing her own thing at the university level again, not syncing with Ogamba.
An education expert, Dr. Jane Ndung’u, put it plainly: “It’s like everyone’s doing their own thing while the CS is left trying to catch up.”
By Creatorhub