Muturi: Privatisation plan is plunder disguised as reform

Former Attorney General Justin Muturi has criticised the government's plan to privatise strategic State corporations. [File, Standard] 

Former Attorney General Justin Muturi has urged Kenyans to demand answers from the government on what he described as plunder disguised as reforms.

Muturi, who is also the former Public Service Cabinet Secretary, said the plan appears to be an effort to make State corporations efficient and profitable but in scratching beneath the surface, what emerges is not reform, but the systematic looting of strategic national assets.

He said the latest target of the agenda is the Kenya Petroleum Refineries Limited (KPRL), the country’s only strategic oil refining and storage facility.

Muturi stated that KPRL, based in Mombasa, has for decades stood as a cornerstone of Kenya’s energy sovereignty and holds over 400 acres of prime land, including vast tracts in Nyali and Kilifi that directly face the Indian Ocean, land whose strategic and economic value cannot be overstated.

“Now, under the guise of “dissolution,” the government is fast-tracking a process that would see KPRL’s assets absorbed by the Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC), which itself is being prepared for privatization. The motive is clear: to strip Kenya of one of its last remaining strategic assets, repackage it as a commercial enterprise, and eventually place it in private, possibly foreign hands. This is not reform. This is the state cannibalizing itself for short-term political and financial gain,” he said, in a statement.

He added: “President Ruto’s privatisation drive is not reform. It is state capture in motion. It is the systematic conversion of public wealth into private fiefdoms. The planned dissolution of KPRL and the absorption of its assets into KPC represent the most blatant act of economic vandalism since the Anglo Leasing and Goldenberg scandals.”

Muturi said that the move is about power, land, and money and if this project succeeds, future governments will inherit a hollowed-out state, too weak to protect its people, too poor to invest, and too indebted to resist foreign control.

He explained that the KPRL facility was designed not just to refine crude oil but to guarantee Kenya’s energy security, is a storage infrastructure, deep-water berths, and vast land holdings make it an irreplaceable national reserve.

“Even after refining operations were suspended in 2013, KPRL remained a critical logistical and strategic site, storing petroleum products and serving as a potential base for future refinery revival. So why dissolve it now? The government claims KPRL is “non-performing” and “obsolete.” Yet those are excuses, deliberately cultivated neglect to justify plunder,” he stated.

According to him, the facility could easily be rehabilitated or retooled for new energy technologies such as biofuel processing or strategic crude reserves but instead, Ruto’s government want to bury it, sell off its assets, and gift its land to private entities under the pretext of efficiency.

“Let us be blunt: the 400 acres of ocean-facing land in Nyali and Kilifi are the real prize. That land, in one of the most valuable coastal zones in East Africa, could fetch billions on the market. Once transferred to Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC), and once KPC is privatised, it will slip irretrievably out of public ownership. This is part of a larger, dangerous pattern,” he explained.

Muturi described the plan to privatize KPC, while simultaneously transferring KPRL’s assets to it, is a masterstroke of deception.

“By collapsing KPRL into KPC, the government can quietly shift vast state properties under a single entity then sell shares in that entity under the “privatization” framework. The result? Billions’ worth of national assets will change hands without public scrutiny.