IPOA Scores :The swearing in of a substantive chairperson caps a steady transition, and points to a board built to hold the police to account.

By Edwin Gogo

Kenya’s civilian police watchdog has reason to stand tall. With the swearing in of Dr Duncan Oburu Ojwang as substantive chairperson, the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) has closed a delicate chapter of transition and opened a new one without losing a step.

In a body whose credibility rests on continuity and nerve, that alone is a score.Dr Ojwang takes the helm for a six-year term, his appointment gazetted on August 31, 2026 after the National Assembly approved his nomination on August 19.

He succeeds Justice Ahmed Issack Hassan, who left in February 2026 on his appointment as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. A law scholar with three U.S. law degrees, the new chairman arrives with a clear promise: to guard IPOA’s independence, to work with the National Police Service without being captured by it, and to lean on body cameras and CCTV to harden the evidence on which accountability depends.

“We will speak truth to power,” he told his vetting committee, a line that will now be measured against his record.

The timing sharpens the stakes. Dr Ojwang assumes office less than a year before the 2027 General Election, when the policing of protests and rallies tests every institution standing between citizen and state.

At the swearing in, Chief Justice Martha Koome urged him to act with independence, courage and impartiality. Kenyans will expect nothing less.But a good handover is only as strong as the hands that steady the body in between, and that story belongs to Anne Wanjiku Mwangi.

Elected vice chairperson when the board was sworn in on December 9, 2024, she served as acting chairperson while a substantive successor was recruited, and IPOA neither drifted nor went quiet on her watch.

A seasoned public administrator with over 11 years in the public sector and a former Chief Administrative Secretary, Ms Mwangi pairs governance experience with academic depth: two master’s degrees and a PhD now in progress at JKUAT.

Kenyans, though, will remember her for something harder to teach: when the death in custody of blogger Albert Ojwang gripped the country, it was IPOA’s investigation that ruled out suicide, and it was Ms Mwangi who told the Senate the CCTV footage had been tampered with.

That is what civilian oversight is meant to look like: a watchdog willing to contradict the powerful. Welcoming the new chairman, she said his experience would strengthen IPOA and serve Kenyans well.If IPOA has scored, it is also because the board is a deliberate blend of strengths.

Boniface Kipkemoi Samati brings two decades in policing, rising to Chief Inspector and DCIO Nyali, while Kenwilliams Nyakomitah adds fifteen years of security leadership and a technology-driven approach to investigations, so that some of those doing oversight understand policing from the inside.

Dr Annette Mbogoh, an advocate of the High Court and former head of Kituo cha Sheria, keeps victims and access to justice at the centre.

Dr Micah Onyiego Nyakego brings a doctorate in strategic management and three decades in public service, while Hon. John Muchiri Nyaga, a former MP, sat on Parliament’s Public Investments and Budget committees, and Hon. Jackline Lukalo Mwenesi, a former Chief Administrative Secretary, chaired a county Public Accounts Committee.

Police insiders, lawyers, strategists and seasoned overseers, each covering a flank the others cannot: that is what beefing up an institution looks like.So what has IPOA scored? Continuity, moving through a change at the top without losing voice.

Independence, because the message held through both the acting and the substantive leadership: oversight that answers to the law and the public, not the service it watches and credibility, because an institution that has already questioned a police narrative, anchored by a Strategic Plan for 2025 to 2030 launched with the Chief Justice, now hands a tested mandate to a chairman ready to speak truth to power.

The real test lies ahead, in cases yet to be investigated and an election year that will strain every safeguard. But institutions are built in exactly these moments: a clean succession, a steady deputy, an interlocking board, and a new leader who inherits not a crisis but a confident authority. On that count, IPOA has scored, and Kenyans are the better for it.