Embakasi East Member of Parliament, Mr Paul Ongili alias Babu Owino- an opposition allied member, had no words to mince for President William Ruto in a live interview on Thursday, January 30, 2025, on the Kogi’s Corner Live Show.
Babu Owino dropped some hard tackles, bringing in some personal aspects of President Ruto as he criticized the national leader of failing Kenyans in his first term of presidency.
“President William Ruto is a product of education. He was selling chicken and eggs to raise school fees. He came to Nairobi to enroll into university. It is education that has made him what he is. He is the one who should be the last to make education inaccessible. Yet, that is exactly what his government is doing through university education funding in a battered economy that makes the poor lack school fees,” said Mr Owino in part.
This was in reference to the University Funding Model that had been introduced by President Ruto’s government that locked out millions of protentional public university students from enrolling in various courses.
“A course going at Sh72,000 per month means all those living below poverty lines alongside middle income earners cannot access varsity education. The JSS has teachers handling 5 subjects in congested classes. The damage this government is inflicting the education sector is a future disaster on the intellect capacities of this nation. The problem in this country is the president. He believes in changing everything to have his imprint. He wants everything to have his trademark. Even those things that are working he is demolishing them to ‘Rutonize’ them ,” continued Mr Owion as he also noted the alleged failure of the Competency Based Curriculum in primary and junior schools.
The Funding model was suspended from being implemented in universities in October 2024, but two weeks ago, the government appealed the ruling.
He went on, “A person with a PHD should not take this country where he is taking it. Selling the airport, SHIF, SHA Sha fiasco in implementation…Anything he touches becomes either a scandal or incompetent.”
Mr Owino went on to hit out at the President for lecturing Kenyans on upbringing morals.
“Respect starts from the top. I hear some other leaders were talking about parents bringing up their children in a way that they should behave well. But how do you want our children- our brothers and sisters, us- to emulate you as the grown ups? We are learning from you. We are emulating you. If you go in public and insult people, we know that is the right thing that we are supposed to do because we are seeing our grown ups doing it. The president is lecturing us about upbringing morals while surrounded by allies who insult our mothers and ranting about everyone and everything. He himself insults people on public TV. He preaches morals for convenience. Respect starts from the top,” said Mr Owino.
In past media reports, President Ruto was also put on the spot for telling parents to bring their children up well morally when his own child was implicated in illegal matters when his public service vehicles were captured on video severally breaking traffic rules and endangering lives as police watched and did nothing. The vehicles were impounded following public uproar but upon release, they were once again captured breaking the very same rules with no legal repercussions.
Another of the President’s children was also linked to a highly criticized and questioned multimillion shilling deal that involved tax payer funds and the Adani Airports Holdings- a company that intended on taking over the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport for 30 years, bringing to question his role in the deal and the conflict of interest which had the Ruto family doing business with the government.
Following massive outcry over what started out as a secret deal to ‘sell’ the airport and the United States of America’s indictment of the head of Adani Group- Gautam Adani, Kenya ended up cancelling the deal which it had fiercely defended, claiming the deal had been done following due procedures but was yet to be cast in stone.
