Why Galana Kulalu project failed- Ruto

Deputy President William Ruto has now revealed the reasons why the Galana Kulalu project failed.

The 1.7 million-acre irrigation project was conceived during President Uhuru Kenyatta’s and DP Ruto’s first term in 2013, to boost maize production in the country.

But the DP yesterday admitted that the project failed due to a lack of liability from the State.

“The recommendation from the trial of the project was that we needed to build a dam because the water from the river was not sufficient to do the Galana project. We needed to scale up,” Ruto said during a televised presidential debate on Tuesday.

Plans to build the dam were not sorted, according to the DP, who was also not clear on why this didn’t happen.

He said that research showed the soils could support maize production and that of other cereals but no action was taken.

“We had 57 dams we wanted to do but unfortunately weren’t able,” said Ruto.

According to the DP, the project was part of the Jubilee government’s wider plan to accommodate agricultural productivity from rain-fed to irrigation. Their second term was geared towards increasing agricultural activity in the country, one they didn’t succeed, because “they ran into headways.”

On Tuesday, the DP also claimed the reason he and Uhuru failed to deliver their promises to Kenyans was due to sabotage during their second term.

Ruto said that the Big 4 agenda was sabotaged due to the emergence of the March 2018 handshake and the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI).

“We went to handshake, BBI and the rest is history. We didn’t get the time to do what we had promised.”

“My boss said he wanted to do things differently. He said he wanted to assemble a different group of people to work with,” Ruto said.

The DP spoke during Tuesday’s presidential debate at the Catholic University of East Africa (CUEA) main campus in Karen, Nairobi. His main rival Raila Odinga boycotted the debate.