Scandals, incompetence doomed Ruto's first Cabinet

The dismissal of nearly the entire Cabinet by President William Ruto on Thursday marked the shortest tenure in government for Cabinet Secretaries in Kenya's history.

Appointed by Ruto two weeks after his victory in the 2022 General Elections, the Cabinet had a chequered history marred by allegations of graft and incompetence from the onset of its tenure.

The president’s nominees encountered hurdles right from the start during their vetting by Parliament, in a process that revealed the caliber of individuals chosen to lead various ministries in government.

Some of the nominees faced tough scrutiny from lawmakers regarding issues of integrity and qualifications.

The vetting exercise served up everything from tears to indignation. Despite some opposition, the list of the president’s appointees sailed through the House.

"We will give William Ruto his skunk, let us not interfere with it, we give it to him since he has asked for it. These are not people who can run a government, apart from a few individuals who are not more than 8 the rest are incompetent, unqualified, have integrity issues, are people who cannot deliver this country from where it is to the level we want," Nominated MP John Mbadi said then.

It wasn’t long before trouble started rocking the ministries under the leadership of the then new ministers.  

The Ministry of Health was soon embroiled in the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (KEMSA) mosquito net scandal, which resulted in the agency losing Ksh.63.7 million after the process to procure a multi-billion tender for the supply of the nets was nullified by Global Fund, following a bungling of the procurement process.  

As a result, Dr. Josephine Mburu, the Permanent Secretary for Health, KEMSA CEO Terry Ramadhani, and the authority's board were dismissed.

Not long after, the Ministry of Trade and Industry became embroiled in a multi-billion-shilling edible oil scam. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) estimated that taxpayers lost nearly Ksh.16.5 billion shillings in the scandal, which involved the duty-free importation of over 125,000 tonnes of edible oil without following due process.

In May last year, the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) revealed the circumstances that led to the release of poisonous sugar, which had been condemned by the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) in 2018, for public consumption. This revelation prompted a crackdown that resulted in the suspension of 27 state officials from 11 government agencies.

But perhaps the scandal that caused the most uproar was the supply of fake fertilizers to farmers earlier this year. The Ministry of Agriculture came under scrutiny for distributing 139,688 bags of 25kg fake fertilizer, estimated to be worth Ksh.209 million, to unsuspecting farmers.

The scandals notwithstanding, no less than the president himself had on occasion called out his lieutenants in Cabinet over their ability to do their work.

"You are the PS or the minister and you don’t have information, how do you run a ministry, a department, or a parastatal if you have no information? That is the highest level of incompetence," Ruto said then.

"Maybe my Cabinet could have done better and so I’m going to do the soul-searching on how we need to move forward," he said.

That soul searching has led to the dissolution of his very first cabinet, barely two years into office. The president will now be hoping that his next Cabinet nominees will fare much better than their predecessors.