Three Rift Valley rebel MPs shocked the nation on Saturday when they sensationally claimed that Deputy President William Ruto owns a 500,000 acre piece of land, on which he plans to plant maize.
According MPs Alfred Keter, Joshua Kutuny and Silas Tiren; this one of the ways that he is planning to frustrate local farmers. The legislators also claimed that the DP should be investigated over the nonstop scandals in the NCPB.
Keter and his co-horts claim that Ruto has a well calculated plan that has even included discouraging people from the Rift Valley from engaging in Maize farming and instead adopt avocado and macadamia farming, while he has a plan of importing Maize from Congo!
But what really is 0.5 million acres of land? To put it into perspective, the whole of Nairobi County is 172,000 acres. This means that the size of land that the DP owns is the equivalent of three Nairobi Counties.
Now, we all know that Ruto’s appetite for land is unmatched, and his love for maize is also public knowledge. But can he be so ambitious to the point of owning three three counties in a foreign country?
Congo Brazaville is a very large country, with huge junks of fertile land. But is there a possibility to find 0.5 million acres of idle land for Ruto to plant his maize.
There is more than what meets the eye in these accusations.
Alfred Keter, the young Nandi MP, is an ambitious person. But coming up with such sensational accusations is just unlike him. So it is either, he has a credible source or he is being used by someone else to tarnish Ruto’s name.
It could be that there is some truth in this, maybe Ruto has some plans to farm in Congo, but 500k acres is definitely a very big exaggeration. My opinion is that the three MPs were just looking to get political mileage from the whole maize fiasco.
Do you believe Ruto owns 0.5 million acres in Congo?