Waititu faces arrest over bizarre spending

Kiambu Governor Ferdinand Waititu could be arrested for bizarre and unauthorised spending totalling billings of shillings.

The Kiambu County Government presented the Senate with a financial statement showed that Waitutu may have allocated budgets for functions unrelated to Kiambu.

"We have given Waititu 45 days to explain these expenses to the Auditor General who will undertake a special audit and get back to us, said Moses Kajwang, chairman of the Senate County Public Accounts and Investments committee.

Yesterday he told the Star, "If there is no credible explanation, we will ask Director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Haji to investigate and prosecute those involved in what looks like a clear case of theft of public funds."

Waititu, popularly known as Baba Yao, told the senators that he was unaware of the improper expenditures and equally shocked. He suggested the items had been "sneaked" into the audit report.

Waititiu claimed that the document “could have been a misuse of the National Government template in the Treasury for Kiambu County”.

Senators were not convinced.

According to the county statement, Kiambu allocated Sh973 million for State House Affairs (Co-ordination of State House functions). 

State House chief of staff Nzioka Waita denied there's a shared budget with Kiambu county.

"Just for the record, State House does not share any budgets with the County Government of Kiambu," Waita tweeted.

The most puzzling expenditure cited in the report was Sh58 million allocated by the Kiambu government to peacekeeping in South Sudan.

For the first time, senators put national auditors on the spot for failing to capture glaring anomalies in Kiambu expenditures and almost giving Waititu's administration a clean bill of health.  

Auditor General Edward Ouko had issued a qualified audit on the county's accounts, meaning he was not completely satisfied with the documents given to him

State Corporations Advisory Services spent Sh591.6 million set aside in the county’s 2017-18 financial year for the budget line.

Kiambu also spent Sh793 million on Free Primary Education. Despite being a National Government function, it had been allocated Sh804 million during the year.

The Senate sent away the auditors and ordered a special audit.

Last week, Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko alleged that some of Ouko's auditors demanded bribes to clear his administration.

Ouko's office is yet to respond to the allegations of impropriety.

The bizarre Kiambu allocations and expenditures were flagged by Kajwang.

They are contained in the county’s financial statements presented to the office of Kenya National Audit Office. Copies were sent to the Senate in response to audit queries.

The spending puzzled the senators who demanded explanations of the expenditures.

Waititu was appearing before the oversight committee to respond to the Auditor General's queries raised in his first year as the second governor of Kiambu.

“If you look at these numbers, they are not adding up. Is it Kiambu government that is financing State House? That Kiambu is paying statutory benefits for retired presidents?” Kajwang asked.

The governor said he was ignorant of the allocations and suggested that the allocation could have been "sneaked" into the bulky documents by officers in the Auditor General’s office.

“What I have seen is also news to me. Nobody could have assumed we could have such allocations in our budget,” he said.

The governor alleged that the allocations could have been "sneaked" in by Senator Kimani Wamatangi to tarnish his name and that of his administration.

“I will not bear the responsibility as the governor for something I don’t know. What I am seeing here from my senator and the other senators is what I didn't expect. They are trying to use politics to tarnish the name of my government,” he said.

But Kajwang trashed Waititu’s argument, saying that neither the committee nor the senator had seen the documents until yesterday when they were presented to the committee.

An auditor seconded to the county from the Kenya National Audit Office affirmed that the documents presented to the committee were true copies of the county’s response to the audit queries.

Each of the documents presented was signed by the county chief finance officer, whose name was not provided, and county head of Treasury identified as John Kinyanjui Chege.

“So, Governor, you must debunk that myth that these are the Auditor General’s numbers. These are your numbers. As a committee, we have no doubt that these are your numbers and we have already taken a decision on that,” Kajwang said.

Kirinyaga Senator Charles Kabiru said, “You cannot come here and start disowning a document that you have with yourself. You have been having it for the last six months, we are not the originators of the document.” 

Nominated Senator Isaac Mwaura said, “It is clear that the governor is not in control of his own government. That a  governor who has gone to school in Punjab and has a master’s degree from Kenya Methodist University can come to the Senate and claim that figures have been doctored is very disturbing.”

During the sitting, the Auditor General came under fire for failing to flag the disturbing Kiambu expenditures in his report.

The committee directed Ouko’s office to conduct a special audit of Kiambu's financial operations to determine its true financial position. A report is to be delivered in 45 days.

The auditor raised several unsupported and unexplained expenditures amounting to more than Sh2 billion.

The auditor raised doubts about Sh807 million variance between figures declared in financial statements and the IFMIS. The government responded that his county has no control over IFMIS.

The report also flagged  Sh637 million paid to temporary employees as allowances and wages because there was no supporting documentation.