Raila steps up push for Ongeri to resign

• But Education boss accuses PM of being out of line for issuing quit calls in public

Prime Minister Raila Odinga on Monday, for the second time, asked Education minister Sam Ongeri to resign and make way for an investigation into the free education scandal.

Speaking during a meeting at Equity Bank headquarters in Upper Hill, Nairobi, Mr Odinga repeated last Friday’s demand that Prof Ongeri and his permanent secretary Karega Mutahi step aside.

Prof Ongeri, who was at the function, spoke quietly to Mr Odinga after the PM’s remarks. He later told the Nation that he informed the Prime Minister he should not have raised the issue in public.

Proper investigations

In his speech, Mr Odinga said: “I told my friend the minister for Education and the permanent secretary to step aside to allow for investigations.

“Investigations start by suspecting everybody. People then go by way of elimination. That is how proper investigations are carried out,” Mr Odinga said, to laughter by the crowd in attendance.

Prof Ongeri, who sat next to Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta, watched as Mr Odinga went on to say that the Nyaribari Masaba MP was his personal friend, but he would still do the same (call for resignation) of his brother or family member if mentioned in graft.

Prof Ongeri and Prof Mutahi have been under pressure to resign after it emerged that ministry officials had falsified records to defraud the free education programme of millions of shillings.

Fifty officials have been suspended and Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission is investigating the scandal. Donors have withheld cash for the programme.

Speaking to the Nation later, Prof Ongeri said by raising the issue at an official meeting, the Prime Minister was “behaving like any other heckler”.

“I wondered why he committed the mistake in public again when I am not under any investigations.”

What was being investigated in the ministry, he said, was a matter of imprests, which affected individual officers and he had no role to play.

He could only step aside, he said, if he was found guilty of an offence.

The minister, a surgeon and former professor of medicine, said it was wrong for the PM to attack him in public when he had a chance to deal with the matter in their offices.

“It is wrong to turn out to be a heckler like other people when you have a clear way of dealing with the matter in private at offices.”

After the meeting, Mr Odinga shook hands with Prof Ongeri and the two beamed at each other.

Equity bank boss James Mwangi joked: “As you can see, they are friends.”

Mr Odinga said the country needed to embrace a proper anti-corruption culture and gave the example of India where the minister for Transport once resigned after a train was involved in an accident.