Kiambu Governor Ferdinand Waititu will go down in history as the first Governor to use County resources to fund National Government Functions.
Well, this sounds so funny given that it is actually the National Government that allocates funds to the County Government.
Waititu was at pains to explain to the Senate how his county got to spend more than Sh2 billion on National government functions.
According to audited financial statements for 2017/18 year, Waititu’s administration had incurred a bizarre expenditure that included funding State House operations to the tune of Sh2.1 billion.
In the statements for appraised by Auditor General Edward Ouko and submitted before Senate County Public Accounts and Investment Committee (SCPAIC) showed payments of Sh902 million for coordination of State House functions, Sh58m for South Sudan peace process, Sh793m set aside for free primary education, Sh578m on State Corporations advisory services and Sh180m emoluments for retired presidents.
And last evening, State House, through chief of staff Waita Nzioka, distanced itself from Waititu.
In a tweet, Waita said: “Just for the record, State House does not share any budget with the county government of Kiambu.”
Consequently, SCPAIC, chaired by Senator Moses Kajwang’ (Homa Bay) has directed Ouko’s office to carry out a special audit on the financial reports of the Kiambu County Government for the year ending June 2018 and submit a report within 45 days.
“We shall have a side discussion with the auditors on how to practically carry out this exercise,” he said. Waititu, however, disowned the controversial listing and accused political detractors of inserting the template with the weird spending in the statements to malign and embarrass him.
“What I have just seen is also new to me. You know we don’t have a budget line for National government functions. As you well know it is not possible for counties to finance any State House function because we do not have budgets for that. This is something that has been done without my knowledge just to make my administration look bad,” he told the committee.
The governor accused some unnamed individuals of using social media to drive a narrative.
But senators Samson Cherargei (Nandi), Fatuma Dullo (Isiolo), Charles Kibiru (Kirinyaga), Kimani Wamatangi (Kiambu) and Isaac Mwaura (Nominated) did not buy into the governor’s explanation demanding to know how more than Sh2 billion had gone to services that do not benefit the citizenry.
They accused the governor of not being in touch with his county matters saying he cannot deny documents which have been signed by his county officials.
“Do you ever go through your county’s accounts or even read these documents because I do not understand how you submitted documents which are already signed by your people then you deny having knowledge of them and start pointing fingers,” Wamatangi said.
But the county chief insisted the concerned documents were being used to tarnish his name.
“I am rejecting page 17 and 18. They are foreign,” he said.