Judiciary and President’s Office link to Ababu Namwamba’s woes

Budalang’i MP Ababu Namwamba’s two-year stint at the helm of the Public Accounts Committee is under threat after it came to light that members, who signed a petition to oust him, are planning to submit it to the Clerk of the National Assembly on Monday.

This is the culmination of a long and vicious fight sparked by accusations and counter-accusations of bribery that have rocked the crucial watchdog committee for some time.

Some of the members behind the plot have also accused Mr Namwamba, who is also the ODM secretary-general, of being a “lone ranger” and running the committee like “a private entity”.

The committee is also dogged by claims of doctoring reports to favour individuals and organisations under investigation.

Some members, it is alleged, have been colluding with parliamentary staff to remove sections of the committee’s findings and recommendations and vanish with supporting documents.

Some members have been accused of openly collecting bribes on behalf of their colleagues, with some double-crossing others by failing to deliver the illegal payments. National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi attempted to dispel the sleaze without success.

Saying he did not want to justify the allegations by responding to them, Mr Namwamba regretted that forces from outside the National Assembly had succeeded in distracting the committee from its core mandate.

“Partisan politics, selfish interests and ulterior external influence can only poison the atmosphere in the committee, thus seriously compromising our capacity to effectively watch over public funds. We have worked very well together until we started handling politically sensitive issues,” he said.

The chairman asked the members to resist the temptation to destabilise the committee.

“Our unity of purpose across political lines, devoid of selfish interests and above external pressures, must remain our strength as a committee,” he said.

Runyenjes MP Cecily Mbarire (TNA), Mr Namwamba’s deputy in the committee, told the Sunday Nation that investigations into alleged financial impropriety in the Judiciary, which touch on former Chief Registrar Gladys Shollei, could have been the breaking point.

“There are external forces who want to push a certain agenda in the committee. On the table is the report on Judiciary and somebody wants to influence it in a particular way,” she said, hinting that a powerful individual in government could be behind the plan.

To show how determined the members are to get rid of Mr Namwamba, we established that MPs pushing the agenda want him replaced before a reconciliation retreat planned for March 1  and 2 in Mombasa.

“He is on his way out. There is no relenting until this happens,” one of the committee members who is spearheading the collection of signatures, said.

Once the petition is with the Clerk, the committee may be called upon any time to elect a new head.

Investigations by the Sunday Nation revealed that infiltration by external forces — individuals under investigation or their agents — is holding the committee to ransom, a situation that has delayed completion of numerous reports.

Forces said to be pulling the strings are drawn from the Office of the President and a senior former employee of the Judiciary. The two entities are the subjects of ongoing and completed investigations.

Some individuals in the president’s office are understood to be unhappy with Mr Namwamba over a report on an audit of government accounts for the 2012/13 financial year, where the committee established that close to Sh3 billion may have been embezzled under the guise of confidential security expenditure.

“The scanty documents availed appeared to conceal more than they actually revealed and were thus a nil audit value. It is the committee’s considered position that the expenditure of the said Sh2.9 bn was so opaque that it was impossible to tell with certainty if the funds had indeed been used for the indicated purposes,” reads one of the findings on the Internal Security and Provincial Administration docket (now Interior ministry).

The revelation is a serious indictment of then Internal Security Permanent Secretary Mutea Iringo (now the Defence Principal Secretary).
Its findings that the procurement of houses and commercial units for the police was irregular is also said to have rubbed the president’s office the wrong way.

Investigations into suspected financial rot in the Judiciary during the tenure of Mrs Shollei as the Chief Registrar has also caused the committee nightmares, with claims that the actual notes taken during deliberation may have either disappeared or been changed to cover up the misdeeds.

And to demonstrate that the bribery allegations are not far-fetched, Ms Mbarire told the Sunday Nation: “Some members have owned up and said they were approached and offered bribes on these matters, but they declined — again these are just what they are, allegations.”

Members, she said, were in agreement that it would be unfortunate to allow “external forces” to split the committee.

“Our hope is that we will come back from the retreat as one team,” she said.

Nambale MP Sakwa Bunyasi (UDF), a member of the committee, is of the view that the onslaught on Mr Namwamba is meant to pre-empt the outcome of two reports they have been working on.

“They want to remove him so as to scuttle two damning reports we are in the process of compiling that will certainly ruffle many feathers in government and other key institutions. The aim is to prepare ground to disown the reports,” he said.

Mr Bunyasi asked the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission to step in and investigate the bribery allegations to redeem the committee’s image.

MEGA-SCANDALS

The Public Accounts Committee has unearthed mega-scandals in the past.

Some of the notable past chairmen include the doyens of opposition politics Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Kenneth Matiba.

Other controversial assignments that have been handled by Mr Namwamba’s committee are the “hustlers jet” saga, where Sh25 million was reportedly paid to Vista Jet — the company that provided luxury jet service to Deputy President William Ruto and his entourage of 15 in a tour of four countries.

The committee finalised the report and submitted it to the National Assembly.

Further splits in the House team are said to have been caused by powerful forces in the government keenly following plans by the committee to summon the electoral commission officials to explain gaps in the procurement of electronic voter registration kits. The fear is that such a venture would potentially open wounds that have presumably healed since the 2013 presidential elections.

The plot gets thicker each day with some members telling the Sunday Nation that their lives could be in danger.

“The dean of African literature Chinua Achebe once wrote that, ‘… a man who takes money from another in return for service must render that service or remain vulnerable to that man’s just revenge. Neither God nor juju would save him’”, said a committee member implying that those crying wolf may have failed to deliver on their promise to shield their benefactors.

Matters are further complicated for the outspoken Namwamba by the apparent isolation by his party. ODM is yet to come out to defend him and sources within the party indicate that a good number of MPs serving in the committee would gladly see him shown the door.

Some ODM leaders who eyed the secretary-general’s post would not mind seeing his fortunes flounder.

The matter is, however, troubling ODM leader Raila Odinga. The Sunday Nation learnt of a meeting Mr Odinga called at his office at Capitol Hill Square in Nairobi on Friday.

An MP who at the meeting said Mr Odinga was concerned that allegations were not good for the party’s anti-graft stance.