Ruto suffers the blushes after 'tendering' Tanga refinery without Suluhu

President William Ruto during recent meeting with Tanzania president Samia Suluhu as criticism mounts over economic data, political shifts and regional diplomacy.

I know this has been a hard week for Prezzo Bill Ruto, so I’ll be gentle. First off, the nation’s top office for statistics, no doubt imbued by the wisdom that numbers don’t lie, released data that confirmed that the bread-based government has been a mishmash of mathogothanio.

 That’s to say, the quality of life under the Kenya Kwanza administration has been one long night of savagery, to quote the doyen of African letters, Chinua Achebe. But since Prezzo Ruto is incorrigibly argumentative, he purported even his own government department is churning out “fakes” for some unstated reasons.

 Well, if Prezzo Ruto disproves data from the folks he pays to do that very job, then proceeds to produce his own set of data, without any reference as to its origin, what does he really want us to do?

 That was last Friday. On Sunday, Prezzo Ruto appeared in a church in Murang’a, the second time in a week. I checked if the Nairobi State House was under fresh renovations, which would explain his restlessness. No mjengo has been going on.

 In Murang’a, Prezzo Ruto sat next to his host, Governor Irungu Kang’ata, one of the most visible lieutenants of the UDA brigade in Central region. By nightfall, Kang’ata was on TV declaring he’d not be defending his seat on a UDA ticket because the tide had changed. The appropriate term is kumechemka, which means things are boiling in that county.

 Even before dust settled, Prezzo Ruto was in Dodoma addressing Tz Parliament. He was received by Prezzo Suluhu Samia Hassan, whose unique greeting was a display of the mikwaju that she breaks on the backs of “errant” Tz youths, and which she assured she’d use to break the backs of Kenyan youth who sneak into her compound.

 Mama Suluhu then sought Prezzo Ruto’s assurance that he’d be as ruthless on Kenyan youth agitating for change in their country. The same principle should apply to Tz youth who stray onto this side of the border. Coming at a time Prezzo Ruto is still smarting from Gen-Z protests that shook his government to its foundations in 2024, he just winced and said nothing.

 Mama Suluhu read this silence as insolence and to demonstrate her mikwaju would be used indiscriminately, she broke the first one on Prezzo Bill Ruto. By the way, she addressed him without any honorific, even though she had a lot to choices to pick from, including Daktari, His Excellency, et al, which tells a lot about how she perceives the man. She demanded instant answers about a project that Prezzo Ruto is purporting to build in Tz, apparently without Suluhu’s knowledge.

 A brief context: Prezzo Ruto, having “launched” hundreds of projects across Kenya over the last three years, without commencing or completing any, has determined that one of his legacy projects will be in Tanga, on Tanzanian coast, where he projects that an oil refinery would cost billions of dollars (the figures are still being cooked) to help leap-frog regional economies.

 His optimism stems from Kenya’s own example: Under his watch, the nation has graduated into a middle-income economy in three short years, and exponentially expanded its road infrastructure to surpass that of the entire East Africa combined. The source of this info, of course, is Prezzo Ruto, and it cannot be corroborated elsewhere.

 Put simply, his vision of refinery in Tanga is not a manifestation of delusions of grandeur, as his detractors claim, but a well-considered intervention that could turn East Africa from a net importer of crude oil into a net exporter of refined oil.

 Looking somewhat subdued by the scepticism expressed by Tz Parliament, Prezzo Ruto, still smarting from Suluhu’s mikwaju, squirmed: Had he anticipated such a sceptical and lukewarm response from Tz, he said, he’d have built the said refinery in Mombasa.

 It appears he forgot Mombasa already has a refinery built some 60 years ago, which he could still “launch” and elicit more applause than the crackle of Madam Suluhu’s mikwaju.