President William Ruto is facing calls for the government to ‘come clean’ on its government-to-government oil deals with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Leading the charge is Azimio leader Raila Odinga who is demanding the resignation of Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ngujuna Ndung’u and his Energy counterpart Davis Chirchir. The former Prime Minister says the two are masterminds of a “monumental scandal that has caused fuel prices to surge sharply in Kenya”.
Responding to Raila’s accusations, the President urged the opposition doyen to prove that the G-to-G oil deal was a scam as he claimed. If there’s one thing we know about Raila — and there’s a lot we know about the man, it’s that when it comes to big or sensitive matters like this one, he never opens his mouth to say anything unless he has the facts to back up what he is saying.
Unfortunately, for him and millions of his supporters, it has many a time proven to be an impossibility to prove those facts because those in possession of the keys to the vault where they reside stubbornly and at times thuggishly say no, you can’t have the key to the vault, therefore, those facts will remain hidden in that vault forever.
So, when Ruto challenged Raila to prove his case that the G-to-G oil deal is a scam, the President was speaking from a position of confidence knowing the holders of the keys to where that evidence is or should be are just not about to walk over to Raila’s office and hand him the keys to where the evidence is.
Why would they? To be sure, there is enough evidence out there to speak to this G-to-G oil deal not being a clean, open and transparent deal devoid of any corruption. For starters, when an heretofore unknown and unheard of person either in business or public life steps forth and says she spent Sh17 billion to pay for oil, the CS for Energy says she had no import license, that alone is circumstantial evidence this oil deal is saddled with corruption.
According to Busia Senator Okiya Omtatah, another man with a proven record in having facts behind what he says, the nondescript person who claims to have spent Sh17 billion shillings to buy the oil is not what she claims to be. Omtatah says he found evidence linking the government through National Treasury CS Ndung’u who authorised the withdrawal of Sh17.2 billion from the Consolidated Fund to subsidise a private enterprise.
The private enterprise according to the Busia Senator was this nondescript person’s briefcase company that was funded in June to import the fuel. At least in the sense that it’s not a known oil company. In other words, a private company was opaquely given tax money to buy the oil when, according to Raila and Omtatah, the Treasury had no authorisation to release the money for this purpose.
There is certainly more to this story than even what has been exposed by Raila and Omtatah, the most obvious one being what led to those purportedly eating quietly, suddenly bursting out in public, puking? Look no further than greed. But it’s a good thing as the public is on to this one and unlike scandals of the past, it’s doubtful the country will tolerate any more corruption of this magnitude.
Granted, this Sh17 billion pales in comparison to the Eurobond scandal gift-wrapped for retired President Uhuru Kenyatta and Anglo-Leasing tailor-made for formerPresident Mwai Kibaki (deceased) but the question is, how many more shady deals are in the pipeline?
Again, the writing is on the wall: Kenyans have had it with this endless mega corruption and if the President won’t do anything about it, they will. It just defies logic and common sense to have people acting with this level of impunity. At a time when Kenyans are suffering with the high cost of living, the President must step away from the sidelines, roll up his sleeves and take on this elephant in the room.
Failure to do so will add to an already-building uphill battle to get a second term.