By Were Kelly
A Nairobi court has acquitted Abdihakim Saidi Jama of fraudulently obtaining a Kenyan national identity card, but the judgment has laid bare a series of investigative failures and unresolved contradictions that have left the case shrouded in doubt.
The ruling, delivered by Principal Magistrate Rose Ndombi on September 22, 2025, centred on three charges against Jama related to his 2011 ID application in Isiolo.
The prosecution’s case relied heavily on the testimony of the complainant, Ayni Hussein Mahamud, who claimed to have known Jama since childhood in Mogadishu, Somalia, and Fatuma Mohamed, a Kenyan woman whose ID number was falsely listed as that of Jama’s mother on his application form. Mohamed unequivocally told the court she was not his mother.
However, Magistrate Ndombi found the state’s evidence critically flawed. The prosecution failed to call the registration officials or local elders who vetted Jama’s original application.
Furthermore, the court accepted the defence’s argument that Jama, an illiterate man, may not have been responsible for the incorrect information on the forms, which could have been a clerical error.
On the charge of being unlawfully present in Kenya, the court ruled that death certificates for Jama’s parents, indicating they were Kenyan, established a constitutional right to citizenship by birth that the prosecution did not disprove.
Beneath this legal reasoning lies a more troubling factual landscape. The initial investigation revealed that for a 2015 passport application, Jama submitted a birth certificate that was verified as belonging to another person, Ann Gatwiri Kithure.
This key evidence of alleged forgery was undermined when Kithure was never called as a witness. During the trial, the defence presented a different birth certificate , along with parental death certificates issued in 2016, creating an unresolved contradiction about the very foundation of Jama’s identity claims.
The handling of the case was also marked by procedural irregularities. After Jama’s initial arrest on separate assault charges, police secured a 14-day detention order for deeper investigation.
This investigation was abruptly cut short; the investigating officers were replaced, the case was transferred to a different court, and several potential charges were dropped. Critical evidence, such as social media posts showing Jama campaigning for political office in Somalia, was allegedly not fully pursued.
Ultimately, the court was bound by the evidence presented before it. The magistrate stated that “suspicion, however strong, cannot form the basis of a conviction,” and granted Jama the benefit of the doubt.
Yet, the acquittal does not conclusively prove his innocence; rather, it highlights a failure by the state to build a coherent and compelling case, leaving the public with a profound uncertainty about whether justice was served.
To safeguard the integrity of justice within its constitutional parameters, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) now faces a critical decision on whether to challenge the acquittal through the appellate process or to accept Jama’s release.
Whichever course of action is taken, this case has laid bare serious gaps in the system.
It underscores the urgent need for tighter regulatory controls in the issuance and verification of national registration documents, as well as stronger legislative and institutional measures to protect whistleblowers.
These individuals often place their personal safety at great risk in exposing fraud and corruption, and their protection is essential in strengthening public confidence in the justice system.
