Nakuru Governor Susan Kihika has formally demanded an apology from Senator Tabitha Karanja over what her legal team describes as defamatory statements made during a church service on December 21, 2025.
In a letter sent by prominent lawyer Ahmednassir Abdullahi, Governor Kihika accused Karanja of making “false, malicious and gravely disparaging” remarks, alleging that the governor misappropriated public funds to build a family-owned hotel worth billions of shillings.
Kihika’s legal team argued that Karanja’s claims, which referenced the hotel’s proximity to State House and Nakuru Memorial Hospital, were intentionally damaging to her reputation and, in their view, threatened national security due to the site’s location.
“Your utterances were deliberately calculated to injure the reputation and standing of Her Excellency with her constituents and was solely conceived, designed and executed to expose her to hatred, contempt, ridicule and odium in order to lower our Client in the estimation of the right-thinking members of Nakuru County in particular and Kenya at large,” the letter reads.
The letter further states that Karanja’s claims were “a gross distortion of the truth, wild fantasy and fertile imagination on your part, grotesque to the extreme, malicious beyond comprehension, false beyond honor.”
Governor Kihika is now demanding that Senator Karanja “immediately and unconditionally” retract her statements and publicly admit that malice was the motive behind her remarks. Kihika’s legal representatives emphasized that failure to comply could prompt further legal action to protect the governor’s reputation and integrity.
This dispute highlights the rising tensions between political figures in Nakuru County ahead of the 2026 Senate resumption, as public allegations continue to intersect with personal and political reputations.
