One year since assuming office, President William Ruto’s administration has been on the receiving end due to an emerging trend of gross blunders by some top government officials.
What started as gaffe by few Cabinet Secretaries is now becoming a pattern and is slowly spreading to the entire Executive.
Recent cases of such embarrassing gaffes saw Trade CS Moses Kuria and Ruto’s top Economic advisor David Ndii came under fire over utterances that appeared to mock poor Kenyans.
Appeared to be angered by the incessant questions on the government decision to increase pump prices, Kuria recklessly told Kenyans to drill their own oil wells.
"If you keep saying fuel prices have hiked from morning to evening.... why not dig your own well? The whole world knows crude oil prices have hiked, if those noisy people have their well, I am ready to dig it so that fuel prices reduce," he said.
Kuria’s utterances followed Ndii’s admission that he does not trust the government, mocking Kenyans for believing what government promised.
"I don’t believe politicians, and I don’t trust government. If you do either you are a sucker," said Ndii on X.
"I don’t agree. I do not subscribe to sentimentality in the conduct of public affairs. I owe my position in this society to speaking truth to power, brutally. I ruffle feathers."
It took Deputy president Rigathi Gachagu’s intervention to reprimand the duo for their ‘insensitive, arrogance and talking down on Kenyans’.
“You do not address your employer with arrogance. Do so with humility and decorum. Kenyans, like the rest of the world, are going through difficult economic times and leaders should address them with sensitivity and empathy,” the DP said.
Whether born out of excitement or ignorance, experts now claim the blunders points to a deep rooted problem in Ruto’s administration.
Some also claim that the notorious government officials are just but a reflection of their bosses.
Ex-Mandera senator Billow Kerrow on Monday claimed what is happening in the government mirrors the thinking of both Ruto and his Gachagua.
"It has become the language of this government starting from the President, the Deputy president and like father like son they say so what the CSs are doing is what they see their bosses doing," he said during a Monday morning show on Citizen television.
"That contemptuous attitude we have seen starting from the President going out there in public rallies calling investors cartels by name and profiling individuals. That attitude has gone down into the rank of the leadership of Kenya Kwanza."
Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna too concurred with Kerrow saying most of the arrogance displayed by the government officials has the blessings of the top dogs.
While firing at Gachagua, the ODM secretary general accused the DP of starting the fire that is now consuming the Kenya Kwanza house.
“Maybe you sit this one out. There is literally no one in the regime that comes close to you (Gachagua) in terms of contempt for the people. You of the ‘shareholders’ fame? No Sir. Sit down,” Sifuna said.
“You make Moses Kuria and Ndii sound like page boys in comparison. They are at best, your students.”
This is not the first time Kuria has been bashed for his approach on national issues.
In November, the CS who is no stranger to controversy while defending GMO food, claimed that Kenyans live in a country where they compete with death daily.
"Being in this country you are a candidate for death and because there are many things competing for death in this country, there is nothing wrong with adding GMOs to that list," Kuria said.
The security sector has also not been left behind after police boss Japhet Koome accused anti-tax demonstrators of hiring bodies from morgues.
Speaking in August at the height of opposition led protests, Koome claimed politicians hired bodies from the mortuary and claimed they were of people killed during the protests.
"It is so unfortunate that some senior members of the society go to the mortuary hiring bodies, calling the media and telling them that these people were killed by the police. How low can some of our leaders sink?' Koome posed.
In April, Agriculture CS Mithika Linturi got Kenyans talking after announcing the country had contracted Zambian farmers to produce maize for local consumption.
The claim was rebuffed by Zambian authorities who denied knowledge of such arrangement.
Health CS Susan Nakhumicha also stunned Kenyans when she purported to order the transfer of Matisi OCS in Trans Nzoia in July this year.
Despite having no constitutional mandate to occasion such a move, the good CS insisted that being a representative of the President, she has powers to transfer the OCS.
"In the government we serve, we are doing something called 'one-government approach'. It does not require the presence of (Interior CS Kithure Kindiki) to transfer the OSC in this area," Nakhumicha said in Kitale during the burial of popular bouncer.
The misplaced remarks came just months after she claimed that medical interns are well paid compared to government hired practitioners—a position that was untrue.
In another pattern of gaffe, the Public Service, Gender and Affirmative Action CS Aisha Jumwa in July upon assuming office announced salary increment for all public servants within 100 days.
She later made a u-turn citing tough economic terms.
In what signals someone unhappy with happenings in his administration, Ruto last month publicly rebuked some ‘clueless’ CSs and PSs who he said have scanty information about what is happening in their respective departments and ministries.
“I call many PSs and ask them what is going on here and they have no clue and this is your department, that is the job that you have; you are not a messenger, you are not a security person, you are not photographer, you are not a watchman,” he said during signing of Ministerial Performance Contracts at State House.
Nominated MP John Mbadi however blames the inconsistency in Kenya Kwanza to incompetency.
The ODM national chairman claimed that most Cabinet Secretaries do not merit the dockets they were given.
“All (blunders) is because of the leadership, he (Ruto) has brought incompetent people into the office, they are not hired to those positions on merit so they don’t care. They are completely out of touch with the ordinary wananchi,” Mbadi said on phone.
“When you get to a position without merit and you don’t engage the people you can say anything.”
“Even Ndii has been overrated for nothing, too theoretical.”
But Governance expert Javas Bigambo argues that it is time the President crack whip on his top officers who are sinking the boat from within.
Just like his predecessor Uhuru Kenyatta was forced to ask his ministers to resign after claims of graft in 2014, Bigambo said Ruto should borrow a leaf and steady his government.
“It is important and possibly instructive that the President makes a decisive decision about his top government officials,” Bigambo said.
“We have seen an effort by Deputy President to apologise and reprimand Kuria and Ndii, but that reprimand is not enough.”