NAIROBI, Kenya Aug 5 – Interior Principal Secretary Karanja Kibicho has denied claims that calls were made from the ministry to immigration officials at the Wilson Airport to block Deputy President William Ruto from travelling to Uganda.
Kibicho said Ruto and his allies had made it a habit to always blame him or his boss Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i whenever they are “in conflict with the law.”
“It has become fashionable to blame Kibicho and Matiang’i whenever they are in conflict with the law,” Kibicho told NTV on Wednesday night, a day after Ruto was forced to spend five hours at the airport waiting for clearance to Uganda.
“That discussion is beyond my pay grade. The Ministry of Interior had nothing to do with the blocking of the Deputy President from travelling,” Kibicho said.
At the airport, Ruto and his allies said they were told instructions to block him had come from the Interior Ministry.
“The law is very clear on foreign travel for state offices and that clearance does not come from this (Interior) ministry,” Kibicho said, “it comes from the Head of Public Service.”
But in a quick rejoinder, Ruto’s Spokesman David Mugonyi said his boss had never been required to seek clearance whenever he travelled abroad.
On the day Ruto was blocked, he made a telephone call to the Head of Public Service who is reported to have informed him that he was not aware of the instructions to the airport to stop him.
Nonetheless, immigration officials did not allow him to travel and he eventually retreated and went back home after spending 5 hours at the airport in what is seen as an escalation of his differences with President Uhuru Kenyatta with whom they fell out soon after the March 2018 handshake with former Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
In an interview on Inooro radio and TV on Wednesday morning, Ruto blamed a section of influential state officials of orchestrating imagined war between him and the president.
“They are pushing me for a confrontation with the president but I will not succumb to it,” he said.
Security sources have revealed that Ruto was blocked from traveling to Uganda due to the existence of a Turkish investor identified as Harun Aydin on his entourage, said to be a person of interest, but the DP has defended him saying he is an investor of high repute who setting up a vaccine manufacturing plant in Uganda and that he had helped him navigate through.
The Turkish embassy in Nairobi also confirmed that Aydin is a reputable investor.
And following the aborted trip, Ruto has been under fire from leaders allied to Kenyatta and Odinga with many questioning why he opted to support an investor set up business in a neighbouring country instead of Kenya.
Suna East MP Junet Mohammed issued a statement Wednesday questioning Ruto’s loyalty to his country and even accused him of being a dalliance to ‘dictator Yoweri Museveni.’
“You can see the people he is associating with and that tells you the kind of leader he will be if he was to take over power,” Junet said.
Ruto is fashioning himself as an economic reformer with his ‘bottom-up approach’ which he says will help millions at the pyramid base but his model has been criticised as a popular initiative that cannot be sustained.
“Where will he get all these money to fund this model,” Junet said.
Ruto however, insists his is the best to help alleviate poverty in the country if he is elected president in 2022 to take over from his boss Kenyatta who is serving his second and final term.
