For nearly eleven years, two of Turkana County’s most ambitious public projects have remained unfinished despite consuming well over a billion shillings in taxpayers’ money, changing hands between two governors, multiple contractors and several procurement processes.
This week, the County Government officially terminated the contract of Landmark Holdings Limited for the Governor’s residence, marking yet another setback in a project that has become a case study of delayed implementation and persistent questions over public financial management.
The contractor, which had been awarded the completion works during the 2019/2020 financial year after the original contractor abandoned the site, cited delayed payments and financing constraints in requesting a mutual termination of the contract.
The decision effectively resets a project that has already outlived one governor’s full ten-year tenure and is now into the fourth year of Governor Jeremiah Lomorukai’s administration.
The Governor’s residence is only one part of a much larger story.
Just a few kilometres away stands the unfinished Turkana County Headquarters, another flagship project that has remained under construction since 2015.
Originally awarded at approximately Sh695 million, the contract was later varied to about Sh829 million. Despite the increase in cost and years of construction, the building has never served the purpose for which it was conceived.
Together, the two projects have committed well over Sh1.1 billion in public resources through contracts, revised costs and completion works, yet neither has delivered the services expected by residents.
The Governor’s residence itself has followed an equally costly path.
The inaugural contractor reportedly received more than Sh206 million before abandoning the project after completing only the foundation and part of the superstructure. Years later, the county brought in Landmark Holdings Limited under a new contract worth Sh90.5 million to finish the remaining works.
That effort has now also collapsed following the mutual termination of the contract, leaving the project once again without a contractor and no confirmed completion timeline.
The repeated procurement of contractors, renegotiations of contracts and prolonged delays have continued to increase questions over whether the county has received value for money from some of its largest capital investments.
Those concerns were publicly amplified last year when the Senate Public Accounts Committee toured Turkana and inspected the stalled projects.
The committee questioned how a county that has received more than Sh100 billion in equitable share allocations since the beginning of devolution could still be struggling to complete core infrastructure more than a decade later.
Committee members expressed concern that the county headquarters alone had consumed close to Sh800 million while remaining unfinished. They argued that similar resources could have financed dozens of boreholes, hundreds of classrooms or several Level Three hospitals in a county where many residents continue to face chronic shortages of water and healthcare.
The senators also questioned the value achieved from expenditure on the Governor’s residence, observing that the completed work on the ground appeared inconsistent with the amounts reportedly spent.
Governor Jeremiah Lomorukai told the committee that his administration inherited numerous stalled projects from previous governments and pledged to complete those that were viable.
However, the latest termination of the Governor’s residence contract means that one of the county’s most expensive projects remains incomplete even after passing through two administrations.
For many residents, the issue is no longer simply about delayed construction. It is about opportunity cost.
Every year these projects remain unfinished represents another year in which public money tied up in incomplete buildings cannot be invested elsewhere. It also raises fresh questions about project planning, procurement, contract management, financial oversight and accountability across successive county administrations.
As the county prepares to reconcile accounts with the outgoing contractor before determining the next procurement process, Turkana’s two most prominent public buildings continue to stand as unfinished monuments to a decade of interrupted development, reminders that while billions have been budgeted and spent, the promised public assets remain largely out of reach.
