Kiambu Deputy Governor James Nyoro has accused his boss, Governor Ferdinand Waititu, of presiding over a corrupt and an incompetent administration that has been allegedly milking the county treasury dry.
Mr Nyoro said further said that Mr Waititu is running a county as a one-man show, and told him to top politicising the audit report, which put him in the spotlight last week, with the help of “outsiders” and instead wait for a special audit ordered by the Senate to clear him.
The deputy governor said the issues being raised are “grave”.
KAA SOBER
According to Mr Nyoro, some of the issues that need to be probed include the controversial rehabilitation programme dubbed Kaa sober, which was gobbling up Sh2 million daily without the approval of the county assembly, an alleged illegal transfer of grants amounting to over Sh1 billion shillings and stalled projects.
“Let’s wait for a special audit to empirically provide evidence for the issues that we are talking about including the stalled projects, Kaa sober and World Bank money. Let’s not politicise the issue,” Mr Nyoro said during an interview on Citizen TV Monday morning.
The Senate County Public Accounts and Investment Committee on Thursday last week ordered the Auditor-General to conduct a special audit on the financial accounts of the Kiambu County government and report back in 45 days.
SPECIAL AUDIT
In calling for a special audit, members of the committee indicted that the office of Auditor-General, accusing it of manipulating Kiambu financial records and called for another audit of Kiambu Alcoholic Fund popularly known as Kaa Sober.
This followed shocking revelations that the county incurred Sh2.5 billion abnormal expenditures to fund functions that belong to the national government.
Mr Waititu has denied knowledge of the abnormal expenditures and blamed his detractors for inserting then in the Auditor-General’s report “to finish him politically”.
DIVERT ATTENTION
But some local leaders said the governor might have done it himself in order to divert people from scrutinising the real issues of suspected corruption in his administration.
But Mr Nyoro has rubbished the governor’s defence, saying that the fact that he was not aware of the abnormal items despite having the report for several months was a clear manifestation of the governor’s poor management skills. He told Mr Waititu to take responsibility for the mess.
“There are two theories; either money was spent which was not appropriated and in this case then this is right, or the fact that this was a mis-posting… or it was inserted, but whatever the case, you (Waititu) you have to take responsibility,” said Mr Nyoro.
“If you are a governor who had brought that report and that report had those items, the first thing that you should have done because you have done your homework (to establish the anomalies) and (failure to do so) shows your level of management capability because you would have consulted you CEC (and) you could have identified it and raised it as a matter of concern to the Senate before the Senate raised it,” Mr Nyoro added.