Businessman Collins Chelui recently hit headlines when it emerged that he had illegally established a police station in his village at Kesses, Uasin Gishu County and painted it with the official colours of the National Police Service(NPS).

Chepkulei however came out to explain why he opted to do that.

He said that it was not an individual decision but a decision that was arrived together with his community because of insecurity in the region.

“We have been having insecurities and we have been telling the police to help us with the patrol base for the longest. We are not blaming them maybe there are no funds for that, we decided to assembly funds so that we can bring the police closer,” he said.

Chepkului also noted that he is close to people in governmnet as well as the people in ground and that is why they entrusted him the responsibility.

He said they have a big market with many people but the nearest police station is 7km away.

“It was a good idea but if we have wronged the government maybe we can apologize saying that we didn’t follow the procedure but going forward we will be procedural.

“There is always a procedure. Before you paint something, you must have gone through few steps. Maybe the steps were not complete,” he told the media.

According to him, the nyumba kumi leader was aware of the plan.

He added that he is the financer of the plan and will be paying rent for the station.

“I will be paying rent as long as that thing is existing until the CDF will come and build another one,” he said.

He dismissed allegations of impersonating the police and said that the post was only 5 days old and had no police officers yet.

Chepkului said that they are currently working with relevant authorize to legalize the station.

How Police Stations Are Established in Kenya

For a police post or station to be established anywhere in Kenya, a formal request from locals  has to be submitted to the Inspector General through their leader.

The Inspector General of the National Police service is responsible for designating police stations or posts and this is done through a gazette notice. One of the things is the IG has to consider is the equal distribution of the station across the counties.

Upon receiving the formal request, the IG and NPS approve the request which then has to be seconded by the Ministry of Interior.

Funds are then allocated for the project and policy direction is provided.

After that, a feasibility study is conducted before approval.

Thereafter, a piece of land  for construction of the police unit is identified and construction follows.

For the facility to be finally launched and begin operations, it should have an armory, cells , offices, toilets and other required units.

These are the required procedures that Chepkulei failed to observe and that is why the police were on his case.