The British Army Training Unit Kenya, known as BATUK, has trained soldiers in Kenya for years under a formal defence agreement between the two countries. A major training exercise, planned for later in 2026 in Laikipia, needed fresh government licences to go ahead. Those licences never came through in time. So the UK announced the training would happen somewhere else instead and not in Kenya.
That single decision set off a storm.
Former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua weighed in first, claiming that certain Kenyan government officials had asked the British side for roughly three billion shillings, and suggesting that the failure to pay it was the real reason BATUK moved part of its training out of the country.
Nelson Koech, the MP who chairs Parliament’s Defence, Foreign Affairs and Intelligence Committee, pushed back hard — not just on the bribery claim, but on the idea that his committee has that kind of power at all. In a public letter, he laid out the actual legal chain of command: under Kenya’s Treaty Making and Ratification Act, only the National Executive through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defence can negotiate, approve, and sign off on a treaty like this one. Parliament’s committee doesn’t negotiate anything. Its job is narrower: study the agreement once it’s handed over, question it publicly, and send its recommendations to the full House.
Koech didn’t stop at the legal explanation. He also took a direct swing at Gachagua personally:
“Rigathi Gachagua’s single term as a Member of Parliament was evidently not enough for him to understand that the negotiation, conclusion, and ratification of treaties are constitutional functions of the National Executive—not parliamentary committees. His two-year tenure as Deputy President also appears not to have instilled in him the patriotism to appreciate that fundamental human rights can never be compromised or traded for any interest.”
Koech also pointed to work his committee had already done: a two-year public inquiry into how BATUK actually operates in Kenya, with a full report tabled in the National Assembly in November 2025.
Meanwhile, the UK’s Ministry of Defence gave its own account, keeping things diplomatic:
“The UK highly values its relationship with Kenya, which is underpinned by mutual benefit, respect and cooperation. The UK-Kenya Defence Partnership is one of the great strengths of our relationship. Our joint training and operations with the Kenyan Defence Forces are keeping both Kenyan and British people safe.
“It is with regret that the necessary licences required to allow training to take place in Laikipia later this year have not been forthcoming. As a result, the planned training will now be conducted at an alternative location outside Kenya.
“We recognise the disappointment this decision will cause for those who would have benefited from the economic activity generated by the exercise. All UK training activity in Kenya is dependent on the permission from the Government of Kenya.
“We remain committed to our defence partnership with Kenya and will continue to engage closely with the Kenyan Government to support the resumption of training in-country at the earliest appropriate opportunity.”
Notice what the MOD statement doesn’t do: it doesn’t confirm the bribery claim, and it doesn’t deny it either. It just says the licences didn’t come through, without saying why.
The Facts
- BATUK’s planned exercise — a six-week programme known as Haraka Storm — was due to bring around 1,500 British troops into the Laikipia and Lolldaiga area come September 2026.
- The exercise has run in Kenya since 2023; this year, the necessary government licences were not issued in time.
- Gachagua’s claim: a Ksh 3 billion bribery demand from Kenyan officials caused the training to be relocated.
- Kenya’s government, through Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi, has denied that the BATUK partnership has ended, saying the new defence agreement is simply still going through the required parliamentary approval process.
- Parliament’s Defence Committee spent two years investigating BATUK’s conduct in Kenya and tabled its findings in November 2025.
- That report recommended that any new agreement should only be ratified alongside firm conditions: Kenyan courts should have jurisdiction over serious crimes committed by visiting soldiers, binding cooperation with Kenyan investigations, environmental responsibilities, and stronger protections for host communities.
Why This Keeps Coming Back to One Name: Agnes Wanjiru
None of this is happening in a vacuum. Agnes Wanjiru was a 21-year-old Kenyan woman killed in 2012, in a case that has long been linked to a British soldier stationed with BATUK. Her case is still unresolved, more than a decade later, and it has become the single biggest source of distrust between local communities and BATUK’s presence in Kenya.
Families and residents from Nanyuki and Laikipia have said publicly that any new agreement must deal honestly with unresolved cases like this one , including questions of legal jurisdiction, justice, and compensation before Kenya simply renews business as usual.
The Law
This is really a story about who gets to make this decision, and the answer surprises a lot of people.
In Kenya, only the Executive can negotiate and sign an international agreement like this one. That means the relevant Cabinet Secretaries, acting through their ministries, with Cabinet’s approval. This comes from the Treaty Making and Ratification Act of 2012.
Parliament’s Defence Committee doesn’t negotiate the deal. It doesn’t set a price for it either. Its real job is scrutiny: study the agreement once it lands in Parliament, question it in public, then recommend whether the full House should approve it. That two-year inquiry proves the committee takes that job seriously. But scrutiny is a different power than “demanding money to sign off” which is the claim now circulating.
Who This Affects
- Residents of Nanyuki and Laikipia, who rely on BATUK’s presence for local economic activity, and who also carry the community’s longest-running grievance: an unresolved killing linked to a foreign soldier on Kenyan soil.
- Kenyan taxpayers and citizens generally, because a bribery allegation this size, if true would be a serious corruption story regardless of which country is involved.
- Kenya’s Parliament, whose actual constitutional role in treaty-making is being publicly misdescribed in this controversy, which matters for how citizens understand what their elected representatives can and cannot do.
- The UK-Kenya defence relationship itself, which both governments insist remains active, even as the public argument over why one specific exercise got cancelled keeps growing louder.
The Accountability Gap
Here’s the real gap this story exposes: a serious bribery allegation — Ksh 3 billion — is sitting in public discourse completely unresolved. Nobody has independently confirmed it. Nobody has been forced to formally deny it under oath, or face an actual investigation. Right now it’s just a political claim versus a legal rebuttal, and ordinary Kenyans are left guessing which one to believe.
Meanwhile, the real substance , two years of committee work on BATUK accountability, court jurisdiction, and protections for affected communities — risks getting drowned out by the noise of one unverified number.
What to Watch Next
The new defence agreement is still sitting with Parliament, waiting to clear the approval process before it can be ratified. Watch for when it reaches the full National Assembly floor for debate and a vote, that moment will force lawmakers to go on record with the accountability conditions the committee recommended, not just talk about them.
Also worth watching: whether anyone, the DCI, the DPP, or Parliament itself opens a formal inquiry into the Ksh 3 billion claim, rather than leaving it as a political back-and-forth.
The Lesson
For readers: when a political figure makes a serious corruption allegation, and an institution responds by explaining “that’s not even how the process works” both things can be true at once. The process explanation doesn’t disprove the bribery claim, and the bribery claim doesn’t disprove the process explanation. Watch for whether either side actually gets independently investigated, rather than just repeated louder.
For the system: if Ksh 3 billion in alleged bribery money was really on the table, that deserves a formal investigation , not just a war of public statements , and if it wasn’t, Kenyans deserve that confirmed clearly too, especially while a decade-old unresolved killing still sits at the center of this entire relationship.
This piece reports on an ongoing public dispute involving unverified allegations. The Ksh 3 billion bribery claim has not been independently confirmed or formally investigated as of publication.
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