CORRIDORS OF POWER

DID the no-nonsense Education CS George Magoha (pictured) recently kick out some businessmen who had visited his office over school textbooks? Well, a source has whispered that the CS sent away the men who were seeking an audience with him over the new government policy of distributing the books straight to schools from the publishers. The business moguls are said to have pleaded with the CS to scrap the policy and revert to the former scenario where distributors were used to supply the books. Magoha is said to have told them that he would not take their ‘nonsense’. The new policy was introduced by former Education CS Fred Matiang’i.

A first-term governor and an MCA from Central Kenya could soon find themselves in serious trouble. EACC sleuths are said to be pursuing the leaders for defrauding a renowned insurance firm of Sh6 million. According to those in the know, the governor used the MCA to threaten the firm, which provides medical cover to his county staff. The company, which was contracted by the former administration, has been offering the service since the new governor took over in 2017. But the county chief is said to be unhappy with the firm after he received information that it oiled his predecessor’s palm to win the lucrative deal.

WERE they bribed? Intimidated? Or what really happened? These are the hard questions that some residents of a county in Nyanza were asking themselves after a planned protest against a governor was called off at the last minute. The residents wondered why the organisers of the protests – an NGO – suddenly called off the demo to protest poor state of roads and alleged high corruption levels in the county. The organisation had mobilised residents and printed white T-Shirts ready to march to the governor’s office. But the march was cancelled and the organisers have remained quiet more than a month later.

AS President Uhuru Kenyatta viciously cracks the whip on graft lords, some Rift Valley MPs believe the graft war is a scheme to sanitise past scandals. Kapseret’s Oscar Sudi, in his best element, was at it again on Friday claiming that for Kenyans to believe in the war, past cases from Independence must be solved. The vocal MP insisted that nobody will trust the ongoing war if many other graft lords from Independence are left to walk scot-free. Did he mean we need to halt ongoing prosecutions, dig deeper in the past before we resume on current cases? Won’t that take decades as the monster wipes out the current generation? Perhaps Sudi needed to know that corruption is corruption, whether current or past and must be fought at all costs. Is his analogy meant to divert public attention and deflate the war? Only time will tell.