Ruto: President who eats, sleeps and dreams of changing how everything is done

President William Ruto’s first three years have been marked with a sharp presidential appetite for change. His most remarkable carryover from the 2022 election campaigns is easily the refrain, “I am going to change this Kenya.”  

Kenyans are learning, however, that not all change is helpful. As President Ruto sleeps, dreams and eats changing things, his country is appreciating that the road to ruin is often paved with good intentions. The country has witnessed changes whose justification is difficult to grasp. The outcome has been negative, especially in big push assignments. Medics talk of iatrogenic conditions. Here, medical treatment causes new illnesses. The effort to replace the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) with the Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF) has itself been iatrogenic.  

There is a pulsating desire to paint the picture of a super-bold go-getter President, waking up the country, injecting life into moribund institutions and systems. The Ruto pulse speaks to an identity crisis, by a leader who is in a panic to make a mark. Ruto is seeking to establish himself as the most consequential of Kenya’s five presidents so far. In a recent public burst of self-admiration, he announced that he was as good as the previous four presidents rolled into one.

Hence Ruto considers himself better than any one of the four in isolation. To sustain this champion image, a “bold reform” agenda is inevitable. This is regardless that it leads to overreach of the kind that the courts keep throwing out. Half baked new things are foisted upon the nation without rigorous examination, testing and piloting.   

The removal of the traditional hip roof from State House buildings in Nairobi, and its replacement with a flat roof, is a sharp external symbol of the President’s penchant for hasty change. It speaks of lack of wider relevance and usefulness in most of these changes.

But it also says something about scarcity of mental energy in the inner sanctums of State House. Many of the changes appear precipitate and unnecessary; utterly nihil ad rem to the country’s needs. Why would replacement of roofs in State House be a priority, while schools close ahead of the calendar, because of financial challenges?  

Public universities are sinking under the burden of debt. Medics are poorly paid. Often, too, salaries in the public service are delayed. But, there are funds for cosmetics and aesthetics in State House. There are also funds to change the way the Cabinet works. Rather than hold Cabinet meetings at State House Nairobi, in the traditional way, the meetings now rove all over the countryside, with purring sounds. They are meant to give the impression that the government is close to the people.

The agenda, dubbed “demystifying government,” is an attempt to create a populist narrative among the great-unwashed masses, on the William Ruto brand. Accordingly, the initial effort to sell to the Gen-Zs optics of a digital Cabinet and a paperless administration has been forgotten. Instead, expensive choppers cut across the skies, to deliver the Cabinet upcountry. In attendance are multiples of fuel guzzlers, racing up and down country roads.

Politicians will fix things that are not broken. Kenya’s Ruto is a lesson in fixing what does not need fixing. His focus is on proving that he is doing something new; something that no previous leader had the courage to do. Accordingly, his desire for change is pulsating, urgent, and feverish. This zeal has no room for feasibility studies, or mapping the scheme to legitimate public interest. If not checked, a lot of this could prove quite wasteful, in the long term. 

Public owned companies are coming up for sale, without clarity on where the thoughts were processed, or the merits. Bills have been rushed through a captive National Assembly, for transformation of other parastatals. Executive Orders have taken care of the rest. The pace is gusty, the mood panicky, and the execution apocalyptic. It’s been a topsy-turvy season, whose injudicious changes have often met their waterloo in the Judiciary. Time and again, the courts have slowed Ruto down, or altogether thrown out his changes.   

Forty-two State corporations have been merged into 20 entities, supposedly “to improve operational efficiency and eliminate redundancy.” Some have been condemned as “out of date.” Surprisingly, among the condemned is the Jomo Kenyatta Foundation (JKF), which has been outstanding in developing books and other learning materials for schools since the independence decade. The foundation’s mandate could not be more pronounced now than ever. If well thought through, the new Competence Based Education (CBE) provides a good opportunity for JKF to produce teaching and learning aids on emerging digital platforms.   

JKF’s mandate can never be obsolete, as claimed. At its inception in 1966, the foundation was expected to be a forum for cultural and scholarly publishing in East Africa. The scope remains immense. There is room, especially, for publishing of journals and other research based publications of huge scholarly value. These can be sold upfront to libraries and policy entities with interest in African studies, all over the world. To send JKF to the grave betrays the absence of visionary insight in the Cabinet that issued the despatch of 21 January 2025. This despatch was, essentially, a death warrant for close to 70 public institutions.  

Other institutions that were condemned to die alongside JKF were the Scrap Metal Council, Kenya Fishing Industries Corporation, Pyrethrum Processing Company of Kenya Ltd, Kenya National Shipping Line, School Equipment Production Unit, and Kenya Yearbook Editorial Board. The Yearbook, for instance, was established under President Mwai Kibaki, and has done outstanding work in documenting Kenya’s rich national history and cultural diversity. 

Others are the Kenya National Assurance Company, Coast Development Authority, Ewaso Ng’iro South Development Authority, Ewaso Ng’iro North Development Authority, Kerio Valley Development Authority, and the Lake Basin Development Authority. Also on this raft is Tana and Athi Rivers Development Authority, and Kenya Post Office Savings Bank.  

It is hardly convincing that these entities have outlived their mandates. They are, rather, victims of mismanagement. More accurately, the chickens of negative ethnicity, and cronyism, have come home to roost. Top-level appointments in government have over the decades worn the tribal face, and a crony willingness to externalise public resources into private pockets. 

With minimal exception, top leaders and managers in these entities became wealthy in equal proportion to the extent to which the entities went down. These parastatals have gradually been reduced to limping bodies. They can be sold on the cheap, to political top cats.

Such is indeed the story of the Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC), which the government is keen to sell to individuals with itchy fingers. Last month, the proposed sale suffered a setback, when the courts issued orders suspending the exercise. The restraint orders were served to the Attorney General, the National Treasury, the Privatisation Authority, and the National Assembly. The motion was filed by the Consumer Federation of Kenya. 

There has been a plethora of other unnecessary changes, most of which have taken the character of power grabs. The panel of experts on compensation of victims of state violence is the latest adventure. Nudged on by ODM leader, Raila Odinga, Ruto constituted this team last month, to be led by Law professor, Makau Mutua. It is deputised by LSK’s President, Faith Odhiambo. While controversy rages on over Odhiambo’s seemingly conflicted role, the courts have made short shrift of the commission, by restraining it from beginning its 120-day business, on account of what petitioners consider breach of the Constitution. 

The 18-member team was sworn in on September 4, to propose and oversee payment of reparations to the victims, or their families, for violations that date back to 2017. The argument has been made in court that this assignment belongs to the Kenya National Human Rights Commission. By setting up the Makau-led team, President Ruto has once reinvented the wheel.

Why does President Ruto love to reinvent the wheel; to fix what is not broken, and to change what is working? Is it about giving the nation better service than has been the legacy, or is it about building a personal brand of sorts? Political leaders love to look busy when, in fact, they are neither working, nor delivering anything useful.  They thrive on the noise made in workshops by dozens of hammers, descending on dozens of empty anvils. These illusions of work and professed delivery are good for them. Popular public narratives, with the media in tow, are good enough rationale for reinventing the wheel and positioning this as something very novel. 

Hence, within three years, Kenyans have witnessed a controversial “affordable housing” big push agenda, regardless that the people like it or not. There have also been on-and-off excitements over extending the standard gauge railway to the border with Uganda. Others are the failed Adani deals in the aviation and energy sectors, and the controversial affordable housing programme. 

The multi-billion-shilling Adani deals fell through, when keen public scrutiny caused the President to rescind them. Both the President and Mr Odinga continue to cry about their collapse. The aviation agenda was a single-source deal that sought to construct a new runway at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, and to upgrade the passenger terminal. The Adani Group would manage the airport for 30 years, over and above the payment. The energy sector deal was about construction of power transmission lines for USD 736 million. Once again, Adani would be in charge for 30 years.

 Apart from hostile local scrutiny, however, Gautam Adani, the investment magnate behind the group was on the US radar, together with seven others, over bribery allegations. They are indicted for cocktails of bribes in India and in the US, running into hundreds of millions of dollars. Their example speaks to integrity gaps that President Ruto’s rushed projects and changes risk running into, regardless that the Kenyan deals may be clean, or otherwise. Serious questions of honesty come into the reference frame.

But, away from integrity issues, traditional wisdom over millennia has frowned at unsettling stable arrangements by introducing unnecessary new things. In ancient Rome they cautioned against upsetting the applecart. Some of President Ruto’s sweeping changes upset what are otherwise functional environments and entities. The massive disruption of NHIF is, without a doubt, the pick of the basket. While it boasts of 23 million registered members and going, by mid this year, and Sh43 billion paid out, the new SHIF seems to be in the doldrums. Last month the system collapsed, amid fears that up to Sh24 billion may get lost in the process.  

That NHIF was rife with challenges was never in doubt. The Kenyan nation has over the decades embraced theft in the place of work as a business model. NHIF was not bound to be an exception to the national gravy train culture. Yet correcting it did not need replacing it with another problematic platform. It is not clear how many of the 30 million-plus registered members are paying regularly. Nor is it clear what will happen to old debts that NHIF owed to hospitals. The government has been trying to run away from the Sh30.9 billion debt, in addition to another Sh25 billion that State agencies have not remitted to the authority. Clearly, these things were not thought through. 

In education, the Competence Based Curriculum was also rushed through, mainly for optics. Like in SHIF, there was no piloting. While a semblance of piloting for SHIF was undertaken in Nyeri, Kisumu, Isiolo and Machakos under Uhuru, the national rollout under Ruto went on without addressing the lessons learned. In CBC schools scamper without resources, guidelines, or even training of teachers! Parents are unsure, teachers are unsure, and even education officials across the country are unsure. There is cause to believe that even CS Ogamba and President Ruto are unsure. 

Uncertainty is the password for President Ruto’s whirlwind changes and reforms. Their iatrogenic character is not in question. Yet, with election campaigns for 2027 in their early stages already, it is unlikely that the President will engage low gears that make for reflection and informed decisions. It would look like Kenyans are set to continue staggering through untidy marshlands of rushed change, with whimsical goals. 

-Dr Muluka is a strategic communications adviser and DNA secretary general