Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua claimed there was an elaborate plan to frame former President Uhuru Kenyatta and him for the violence witnessed during Tuesday’s anti-Finance Bill protest. Speaking in Mombasa on Wednesday evening, Gachagua sensationally alleged that a senior state official had devised a scheme to accuse specific leaders of instigating the violence.
“Yesterday, he(the official) was trying to put up a team together to craft lies and propaganda and attribute the chaos that was in the country to leaders, former President Uhuru Kenyatta and I included,” Gachagu said.
He said it is very clear that the protests were caused by the anger of the people of Kenya against the Finance Bill 2024.
Gachagua alleged that he was informed that some Members of Parliament (MPs), who voted against the Bill on Tuesday, “are being targeted for harassment over their political stand.”
“I want to call on the National Intelligence Service not to take us back to the dark old days of the Nyayo era where you create propaganda and schemes to undermine leaders and those you don’t agree with,” he said.
The Deputy President did not mince his words as he called for the resignation of NIS boss Noordin Haji, accusing him of incompetency and failure to advise the President accordingly on the issue of the Finance Bill for the last two months.
“The National Intelligence Service slept on the job, and the problem is simple. The Director General of the National Intelligence Service, Noordin Haji, was a junior who served in the National Intelligence Service before he was appointed as DPP.
“When he was appointed to the office of the director general, because of inferiority complex, he chased away all the people who were senior to him when he was in the service, therefore crippling the capacity of that service and making it dysfunctional.”
He said three directors were chased away and reassigned to desk jobs in ministries across the government.
“Thirteen assistant directors, men and women with a proven track record of intelligence collection and analysis, were removed from the National Intelligence Service, leaving a shell under a clueless director general who cannot run the organisation,” he said.
Gachagua asked the President to sack Haji and recall all three directors and the 13 assistant directors who were removed from service to come and help reconstruct the NIS.
“President William Ruto deserves better. He deserves a director general who knows what he is doing. He deserves a National Intelligence Service that is effective and that can analyse situations and keep him and the Government informed on what is going on,” he said.
The DP added, “It is embarrassing to me as Deputy President that it has taken protests, deaths, mayhem, destruction for the President to know the truth, yet there is an organisation charged with that responsibility.”
He said had President Ruto been advised two months ago about the reality of Kenyan’s feelings about the Finance Bill 2024, he would not have asked MPs to push it through.
