For years, Kimilili MP Didmus Barasa presented himself as a retired Kenya Air Force captain. His profile on the National Assembly website once described him as having served in the Kenya Defence Forces’ Technical Wing as a captain between 2001 and 2007, while his LinkedIn profile used the title “Capt Rtd Didmus Barasa.”
But military records cited by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission told a radically different story.
According to the EACC, Barasa joined the Kenya Air Force on October 28, 2007 and left the military on February 26, 2009, after roughly one year and four months of service. His rank at the time of separation was Private, not Captain.
The discrepancy first came under serious scrutiny in 2021, when People Daily reported that EACC was investigating how Barasa had come to describe himself as a retired captain despite questions over his actual military record.
The anti-graft agency subsequently wrote to Barasa warning him to stop using the title Captain (Rtd).
EACC said its investigations had established that Barasa had never attained the rank of captain during his service and that representing himself as a retired captain in official transactions and documents raised integrity concerns under Chapter Six of the Constitution and the Leadership and Integrity Act.
Barasa disputed the allegations and challenged the EACC action in the High Court.
That legal challenge produced one of the clearest pieces of evidence in the controversy.
In Barasa v Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission & another, Justice Esther Maina ruled in June 2022 that EACC had acted within its mandate when it investigated his use of the retired-captain title.
The court record states that EACC investigated a complaint that Barasa was holding himself out as a retired KDF captain. The commission checked his National Assembly declarations and then obtained information from the Kenya Defence Forces showing that, although he had served in the military, he had not retained the rank of captain.
More significantly, the court found that Barasa had not demonstrated that EACC’s allegation that he had passed himself off as a retired captain was false. His petition seeking to stop the investigation and quash the commission’s warning was dismissed.
The 2021 EACC findings also raised questions about the circumstances surrounding his departure from the military. Nation reported that military records indicated he was dismissed on disciplinary grounds after allegations including absenteeism and gross misconduct.
People Daily similarly reported that he was subjected to a court martial after being accused of absence without leave and gross indiscipline before being dismissed from the force.
The controversy has now resurfaced alongside a fresh storm over Barasa’s academic credentials.
On September 14, 2026, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology told the Consumers Federation of Kenya that Barasa was not a student at the university and that it did not award him the Bachelor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering degree attributed to him. JKUAT also said it did not hold a graduation ceremony in May 2008, the date appearing on the disputed certificate, and described the certificate as “NOT GENUINE.”
That development has brought renewed attention to the older military controversy because Barasa’s earlier public profile combined his claimed engineering qualification with the disputed captaincy.
The National Assembly’s older profile had described him as a former Kenya Air Force captain who served for six years. EACC’s findings placed his actual military service at approximately 16 months and his final rank at Private.
There is therefore a documented and unresolved contradiction between the Captain (Rtd) identity Barasa publicly used and the military records relied upon by EACC and the High Court.
The court did not merely reject his challenge on a technicality. It recorded that EACC had established from KDF that Barasa had served in the military but had not retained the rank of captain, and dismissed his attempt to stop the investigation.
Barasa has previously rejected the allegations, accusing EACC of pursuing what he described as petty matters and saying he had instructed lawyers to challenge the commission’s actions.
What began in 2021 as questions over a military title has consequently become part of a much broader public-record controversy surrounding the MP’s professional and academic biography.
For now, the strongest documentary finding on the military question is not the old parliamentary profile bearing the captain title, but the subsequent EACC investigation and the 2022 High Court judgment, which recorded that KDF had established that Barasa had served but had not retained the rank of captain.
The question that remains is how a former Private came to be repeatedly presented in official and professional records as a retired Captain.
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