Jubilee Party leaders have launched scathing attacks on Deputy President William Ruto over his multibillion wealth.
Led by Jubilee Party Secretary General Raphael Tuju, they accused Ruto of tribalism, blackmail, selfishness and greed of the highest order.
In a statement, the leaders questioned how he acquired his wealth as revealed by Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i last week.
“By his own accounts, the deputy president is on video record when he told Kenyans that he was worth Sh.100 million some time in 2015. In the intervening 7 years, he has worked very hard in his businesses and now therefore he has assets like choppers, hotels, and land worth billions of shillings,” he said.
Last week, Matiang’i revealed some of Ruto’s properties that are protected by State police officers, following uproar from his quarters over the reshuffling of his security detail.
“We would like to congratulate Dr. Ruto for being able to make such amazing strides in business even as he was studying for his PhD concurrently with running a multi-billion shilling empire and carrying the heavy burden of working as number two in command and being involved in presidential campaigns on his Sundays, still sparing time to do harambees from his hard-earned sweat money. From our records, he has been more generous than Safaricom and other bluechip companies,” Tuju said in a statement read at a press conference at the party headquarters in Pangani, Nairobi.
Tuju urged Ruto to publicly reveal his tax payments with the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) to go along with his admission of netting Sh.1.5 million from his massive chicken farm.
He also cited the Arror/Kimwarer saga claiming that Ruto told Kenyans that only Sh.7 billion had disappeared, however, the money has never been returned by the Italians.
“Since he has got some private business networks in Italy that he had gone to meet, would he be so mind to this nation of poor people, nation of hustlers according to him, as to use his vast business networks to recover this money. It is a lot of money even though he referred to the figure as Sh.7 billion only. Even with the DP’s chicken farm income of Sh.1.5 million net a day, it will take some 13 years before that chicken farm produces Sh.7 billion,” read the statement.
Tuju also accused Ruto of blackmailing the President Uhuru Kenyatta-led government between 2013 to 2017 for his own selfish reasons.
According to the Jubilee Secretary General, the ‘blackmail’ collapsed after the handshake in 2018.
“We believe our President has been very tolerant and has accommodated his past behaviour and demands as a statesman whose mission is to make Kenya viable by uniting the country,” the Jubilee statement adds.
The leaders claimed Ruto gave all top government jobs, including Cabinet slots, to his tribesmen.
This, they said, left Uhuru with the difficult job of getting jobs for all the other Kenyan communities. This claim was first raised by Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka.
He told off DP Ruto for allegedly perpetrating a social media attack against Mzee Jomo Kenyatta through his cronies, urging him to call his house to order.
“As a party, we’re sending the deputy president a public statement that we will not countenance his venturing into crossing this line of referring to the family of the late president Mzee Jomo Kenyatta. He must call his goons to order, we continue to resist a lot of provocation luring us to go into the slimy and smelly social pig stay that some of his people occupy,” he said.
The statement comes after Ruto, during his tour of the Mt Kenya region on Sunday, accused Tuju and Murathe of auctioning Jubilee to ODM.
Ruto had also denied some of the properties Matiang’i said he ownedstating that he does not, for instance, own a 15,000-acre ranch.
However, he disclosed that he owns 400,000 shares of telecom giant Safaricom and 8,000 shares of Kenya Airways and that he makes Sh1.5 million a day from his Koitalel poultry farm with 200,000 chickens.
Tuju was joined by Senate Majority leader Samuel Poghisio, his National Assembly counterpart Amos Kimunya and their deputies Fatuma Dullo and Jimmy Angwenyi, respectively.
National Assembly Majority whip Emmanuel Wangwe, his deputy Maoka Maore and Jubilee coalition secretary Adan Keynan were also present.
