By P Wesonga
Kenya will only become food secure when Ruto is out and far from state coffers.
In Kenya, starvation and death is now being blamed on extended drought while in reality DP William Ruto’s insatiable corruption is the reason the country is acutely food insecure.
Fake fertilizer, failed crop, collapsed projects, corrupted NCPB, it’s all got his footprints.
Sample this:
When Jubilee came into power, Ruto, the purported PhD agriculturalist – promptly discarded Turkana’s Todonyang Irrigation Project onstensibly because it had been launched by the then PM Raila Odinga whom he didn’t want to give any credit.
In its place, they conceptualised the Sh14.5 billion – one million acre Galana Kulalu mega irrigation project. Predictably, that has since turned out to be the whitest elephant and a catastrophic failure after DP and his allies scamed the project leading to the Israeli firm driving it pulling out.
From 2014 to date, only 5000 acres of an intended million acres targeting food crop production has been farmed. The treasury is Sh5.9 billion short and contractor has abandoned site.
In the meantime, Kenya’s last line of defence against hunger the Strategic Grain Reserve domiciled at NCPB is reeling from the effects of a Sh1.9 billion heist masterminded, again, by Ruto and his cohorts. An investigation revealed that several politicians allied to Ruto came in disguised as farmers and were irregularly paid Ksh1.9 billion by the NCPB.
Separately, it also emerged that senior Ruto and his allies conspired to award a South African company a multimillion-shilling deal to supply Kenya with maize in a process fraught with irregularities.
To compound the problem, for more than 4 years now, Kenya continues to grapple the loss of billions each year through the importation and distribution of substandard adulterated fertilizer to farmers. In the final analysis, the yields have taken a beating and in some areas, total crop failure is reported. Of course, the middlemen doing this dirty business are affiliated to Ruto, his Tanga Tanga movement and to some extent his own family.
Today, Ruto is shouting loudest about no hunger deaths in Kenya’s Northern Frontier Districts as he cries wolf about a corruption purge that he says is targeting him.
President Uhuru Kenyatta is seemingly unable to take action against Ruto and his morbidly corrupt allies.
Maize farmers in the Grain Basket of the North Rift are all cursing one man, his politics and corruption.
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