TURKANA – Turkana Senator James Lomenen has intensified his parliamentary oversight campaign, launching a comprehensive push for accountability regarding stalled, incomplete, or functionally non-operational development projects across Turkana County. Speaking on the floor of the Senate during the Tuesday, September 8 afternoon session, Lomenen formally requested a sweeping legislative intervention into the status of public sector investments funded across three consecutive cycles: the 2021/22, 2022/23, and 2023/24 financial years.
Demanding a comprehensive forensic accounting of public expenditures, the senator pressed the House to establish a definitive inventory of projects that were successfully executed, those that remain languishing in partial completion, and those that were never initiated despite receiving financial disbursements. His request specifically targets critical sectors including health, water supply, basic and tertiary education, and road networks aiming to uncover the root causes of chronic project delays and hold responsible entities accountable.
This latest legislative maneuver represents a dramatic scaling-up of Senator Lomenen’s long-standing crusade against institutional inertia and fiscal mismanagement in the region. Rather than petitioning on an ad-hoc, project-by-project basis, Lomenen’s latest intervention expands the scope of legislative inquiry to cover multi-year systemic capital expenditure. For years, his oversight efforts have spotlighted specific, high-profile infrastructure failures that directly impact the daily lives and livelihoods of local residents.
Among the most prominent of these targets is the agricultural and water sector, where delayed investments have directly compromised regional food security and climate resilience. In June 2025, Lomenen challenged the Ministry of Agriculture in the Senate over the prolonged stagnation of the 300-acre Konoo Irrigation Scheme in Loima Sub-County.
Despite being initiated years earlier to boost local crop production, official Senate records revealed that the project had reached a meager 27 percent completion rate by June 2020 before work ground to a complete halt. Similarly, in October 2024, the senator demanded answers regarding the failure of the Kawalase flood-control project, where structural defenses along the River Kawalase collapsed despite receiving repeated fiscal allocations across multiple financial years.
His legislative inquiries have also sought clear operational updates on the long-anticipated Lowaat Dam in Turkana East, a critical bulk water supply project that has suffered from persistent administrative delays.
Energy grid infrastructure and judicial access have faced similar parliamentary scrutiny under Lomenen’s tenure. In March 2024, the lawmaker demanded a formal statement regarding stagnant Rural Electrification and Renewable Energy Corporation (REREC) initiatives spread across Kangakipur, Lopeduru, Kodopa, Nepeikar, Loturerei, Lolupe, Nayuu, Kaeris, and broader Turkana West.
Many of these electrification schemes were officially commissioned as far back as 2019 but remained uncommissioned or non-functional years later, leaving rural trading centers and household networks in the dark. In the judicial sphere, Lomenen intervened in October 2023 to demand an explanation for the stalled construction of the Lodwar Court Building, questioning why a critical piece of legal infrastructure intended to decentralize access to justice had remained an unfinished building site for years.
Transportation networks, vital for linking the vast and historically marginalized county to national markets, form another pillar of the senator’s oversight portfolio. In February 2025, Lomenen formally interrogated the ministry responsible for transport over chronic delays surrounding the Lomut–Lokwamosing road and the Nginyang’–Lokori–Lokichar corridor. Despite engineering designs having been fully finalized years prior, physical implementation remained severely behind schedule. Lomenen pressed for binding completion timelines, emphasizing that unfulfilled road infrastructure continues to impede emergency services, regional commerce, and security operations throughout the corridor.
By synthesizing these localized, sector-specific grievances into a singular, broad-spectrum financial inquiry covering three whole fiscal years, Lomenen has shifted the public discourse in Turkana County. The central issue for constituents has evolved from tracking gross budget allocations to demanding tangible physical assets and operational services.
As the Senate prepares to process this latest demand for institutional accountability, the fundamental questions before the House are clear: where funds allocated for Turkana’s transformation have vanished into unfinished works, who must be held legally and administratively responsible, and when the residents of Turkana will finally realize the dividends of public investment.
