Moses Wetangula, the speaker of the National Assembly, has offered a Ksh. 1 million cash reward to the chief who leads Bungoma County’s voter registration and new ID drives.
Wetangula encouraged Bungoma County administration and political leaders to utilize President William Ruto’s directive exempting National ID applicants from verification in order to increase the registration push.
To facilitate the process of obtaining the crucial document, President Ruto signed the Presidential Proclamation on Registration and Issuance of IDs to Border Counties in February 2025.
For many years, people in the northeast had to go through further screening in order to obtain national identity cards and birth certificates.
Wetangula informed the leaders during the conference that the presidential decree affected several border counties and towns in addition to the Northeast.
The Speaker also questioned why just over 600,000 voters had been registered in Bungoma, Kenya’s third-most populous county, for the general election in 2022.
He pointed out that voter registration should match the county’s population. Bungoma County is home to 1.6 million inhabitants, according to the 2019 Kenya Population and Housing Census.
He declared a contest to increase the ID and voter registration effort, promising Ksh. 1 million to the chiefs who win by the middle of the next year.
“After Nairobi and Kakamega, Bungoma is the third-largest county in Kenya. However, when you look at the number of registered voters, you see that Bungoma still has 600,000, Nairobi has almost 3 million, Kiambu has 1.2 million, and Nakuru has one million. How will we be taken seriously?” He pretended.
“I’ll start a competition between the locations depending on your numbers because I want to raise something for you chiefs. I’ll offer Ksh. 1 million to the chief and his assistant by the middle of next year if they have the most IDs and voter cards.
Additionally, the speaker urged the leaders to intensify their efforts to get the citizens to sign up for the Social Health Authority (SHA) in order to receive the program’s coverage.
