Legislature asleep on its job as country sinks deeper into debt, warns Omtatah

The legislature has been accused of failing in its oversight role, with Busia Senator Okiya Omtatah alleging that it approved illegal payments and turned a blind eye to massive public debt accumulation.

Speaking on Monday during an interview on Spice FM, Omtatah said Parliament’s failure to question irregular expenditure had contributed to the country’s current debt crisis, describing the situation as “criminal negligence.”

“In terms of criminal negligence, Parliament has been very negligent,” he said.

“If Parliament approved only Sh2.3 trillion, and during Kibaki’s time it had approved Sh2.7 trillion — that’s Sh5 trillion — but the Executive has paid Sh8 trillion, and Parliament is approving those payments. Parliament should be questioning it. Somebody is not doing their job,” he said.

Omtatah also lamented that the Senate has been deliberately edged out of the national budgeting process, leaving legislators like him powerless.

“I’m just an observer like anybody else. Officially, I have no voice in these matters in Parliament. So I have to go to court and litigate,” he said.

He cited a recent court win as an example of how public funds are routinely lost through politically influenced decisions. The court ruling involved a tax waiver granted during the merger of NIC Bank and Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) under former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration.

“On Friday, I won a very big case. When NIC and CBA merged, the President, through former Treasury CS Ukur Yatani, gave them a waiver from paying tax on assets worth Sh700 billion. The tax was supposed to be 1.2 per cent, which is about Sh7.4 billion. I challenged the waiver in court and won. The court ruled that the waiver was illegitimate and that the money must be paid to the taxpayer,” Omtatah said.

He argued that if such amounts can go missing in single transactions, the cumulative effect of multiple unregulated deals is catastrophic. He noted that Kenya’s budget is larger than those of all other East African countries combined — excluding the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“That’s how rich Kenya is. But we’re not seeing the development this kind of money should bring. If we were truly spending Sh2.2 trillion annually on development, we would feel it,” he said.

Recovery petition

The Senator further revealed that he has filed a petition seeking to recover Sh6.9 trillion he claims was borrowed illegally. Of this, he attributes Sh4.6 trillion to the administration of Uhuru Kenyatta and Sh2.3 trillion to President William Ruto’s government.

“I am suing Uhuru Kenyatta for a recovery of Sh4.6 trillion and William Ruto for Sh2.3 trillion,” he said.

“That money was borrowed outside the law and cannot be seen to have done anything tangible. Mr Ruto, Mr Uhuru — give us back this money. We need it.”

He referenced Section 15 of the Public Finance Management Act, which states that government borrowing must strictly fund development expenditure — such as asset acquisition — and not recurrent costs like salaries or debt repayments.

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• Legislature asleep on its job as country sinks deeper into debt
• warns Omtatah

“The law says you must finance recurrent expenditure from taxes,” he explained.

“Borrowing should only be for development. Even repaying debt is classified as recurrent expenditure. So the claim by President Ruto that the Eurobond was used to repay debt is illegal.”

According to Omtatah, the government claims to have spent Sh22 trillion over the last decade — Sh17 trillion in loans and Sh4 trillion in tax revenue — supposedly on development. He questioned why, despite these huge figures, the impact is not visible on the ground.

“We’ve supposedly been spending Sh2.2 trillion every year on development. If that were true, we’d be seeing real change,” he said.

The Senator insisted that Kenya’s financial crisis is a product of institutional failure — from Parliament, the Executive, and even constitutional bodies meant to provide checks and balances — and that only accountability and strict adherence to the law will help the country recover.