How DP Ruto lobbied CS Matiang'i over police uniform tender -

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An increasingly beleaguered Deputy President William Ruto is at odds with Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i over a multi-million tender for supply of new police uniforms, Kenyan News Day can authoritatively reveal.

Ruto has reportedly exerted direct pressure on Matiang’i in an attempt to influence the award of the tender in favour of a company he has interests in, through his wife Rachel.

In a series of phone calls which CS Matiang’i was at first reluctant to receive, both the deputy president and the second lady actively canvassed to sway the CS to award the police uniform and shoes tenders to a business owned by the Ruto family.

Canvassing is strictly prohibited in public procurement. Furthermore, public officers ethics laws restrict government officials from trading with government.

Regrettably for the Deputy President however, President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered the Interior ministry to award the lucrative tender to the National Youth Services (NYS) which Kenyan News Day understands has the capacity to design, tailor and supply the new police uniforms in the required quality standards.

A desperate Ruto is said to have spent considerable time on several phone calls to Matiang’i pleading for his case and even demanding for termination of contract to the NYS. What is surprising, however, is the wadding into the matter by the second lady Rachel.

Usually seen in public as reserved, calm and collected, Mrs Ruto also bizarrely placed several calls to Matiang’i in pursuit of the same contracts but these calls never yielded any result. Matiang’i wondered why the DP could not take up the matter directly with the President.

Unknown to the public, Matiang’i has not been on talking terms with the DP and some of his allies for a while now with two factions having emerged from Jubilee soon after the 2017 general elections. It therefore came of great relief to the DP when the Interior CS took his call to discuss business.

In the 2018-2019 financial year, the ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government received a humongous budgetary allocation of  Sh286.7 billion.

Sources told Kenyan News Day that when the DP realised the police uniform tender was gone, he went ahead to enquire about the safety shoes tender, which is reportedly worth several close to a billion shillings, he was informed that this had also been awarded to Chinese manufacturer.

The embattled DP, known for his political philanthropy and generosity, has lately lost various sources of cash, the most recent being loss of hundreds of millions of shillings in monthly rent for police houses whose long-term leases President Kenyatta abruptly terminated, cutting off a key revenue for several entities owned by Ruto and his family. Most of those leases were due to run until year 2022.

In September, President Kenyatta announced a merger of the regular and administration police as he unveiled new uniforms for police officers. While many tenderprenuers saw an opportunity to rake in profits, the president had different ideas.

So swiftly were the uniform changes implemented that the Inspector General Joseph Boinnet personally took charge of the process while the Treasury were to also operationalizing financial provisions with immediate effect.

And as if to rub salt into Ruto’s shrinking government cashcows, IG Boinnet further revealed that awarding the contract to NYS had substantially cut the cost of manufacturing the 60,000 sets of police uniform that are required to be delivered early December in for use countrywide on Jamhuri Day due to be observed on 12th December 2018 when they will be officially commissioned by President Kenyatta.