The Council of Governors (CoG) will move to court to challenge the National Treasury’s directive mandating the Electronic Government Procurement (e-GP) system across all counties.
The CoG chair and Wajir Governor Ahmed Abdullahi announced the Move during an interview on September 2, warning that the rushed rollout has “frozen” county operations and disrupted services.
“As CoG, we are moving to court because we have asked the CS to withdraw the circular and it hasn’t been withdrawn. We are frozen; we can’t procure. The e-procurement system was hurried and has disrupted service delivery,” Abdullahi said during a TV interview on Tuesday.
Abdullahi stressed that governors are not opposed to technology or accountability, but to an implementation they say is ill-prepared and malfunctioning.
“If this thing worked seamlessly, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation,” he added, calling for proper piloting, a parallel run with manual processes as a safety valve and training for county staff.
The court move marks a sharp escalation in a standoff that has intensified since Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi directed all government entities to migrate to the new e-GP platform.
Mbadi has maintained the circular remains in force until Cabinet revokes it, arguing the system is designed to seal loopholes and enhance transparency against vested interests that benefit from manual tendering.
The National Treasury commenced the e-GP rollout on April 2, 2025, integrating it with IFMIS to digitize the entire procurement chain from planning to payment as part of broader public finance reforms. However, weeks of pushback from both Parliament and the CoG have followed, with critics citing system glitches, inadequate consultation and legal misalignment with existing procurement laws that still permit manual processes.
Governors argue that the abrupt switch-over has created a procurement logjam: without a functional platform or legal clarity, new tenders cannot be initiated and ongoing ones are stalled, choking essential services across the 47 counties.
“We call on the National Treasury to immediately withdraw the circular directing counties to implement e-GP until proper consultation is done,” the CoG previously said in a statement .
Abdullahi also urged the Treasury to pause and fix the system rather than “gaslighting” counties as wastage hubs, noting that corruption risks are not unique to devolved units and that political responsibility borne by governors does not place them in day-to-day charge of supply chains. He reiterated the council wants a credible, stable platform implemented legally and practically to avoid paralyzing frontline services.
The Treasury and its supporters insist digitization will curb bid-rigging and insider dealing by making all steps auditable online. But a growing chorus including MPs contends that systems alone cannot cure corruption and that an unready rollout may simply replace one set of problems with another while undermining service delivery.
Beyond the legal challenge, governors are also pressing for structured consultations to align the directive with the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act and its regulations. They want a phased migration plan, clear fallback procedures when the platform experiences downtime and comprehensive capacity-building for procurement and ICT teams in counties.
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