President William Ruto was in vintage form on Sunday night as presided over a town hall meeting in Nairobi on the contentious new model for higher education funding.
The audience, mostly comprised of university students, got an expert primer on the issue, which mostly revolves around a new means-based criteria that take into account an applicant’s financial circumstances, as well as differing costs for various disciplines.
It is of course a good thing when the President has a clear understanding of the issues that form the core of policy proposals. That is a score on which Dr Ruto cannot be faulted.
However, that the President found it necessary to hold the town hall meeting, and always take the lead in defending and explaining contested government plans, can also be deeply troubling.
It was one year ago at State House during the signing of performance contracts by his Cabinet secretaries and principal secretaries when the President lamented that some of his senior officers displayed little understanding of their dockets. He complained that he seemed to understand more about what was happening in their ministries than they did.
The town hall on Sunday, and a previous meeting at State House where he tried to win backing from student leaders drawn from various universities and colleges to forestall possible disturbances, were interventions that amount to a vote of no confidence in the leadership of the Ministry of Education.
Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba is fairly new in the job, being one of the newcomers brought in to replace the presumably incompetent lot dropped in response to the Gen Z inspired protests that shook the Ruto regime to the core.
He must now be wondering whether he is the right man for the job if he can’t be trusted to explain the new university funding model.
The Ministry of Education permanent fixture, PS Belio Kipsang, should also be looking over his shoulder. President Ruto might as well sack the ministry bosses and take over the docket for himself.
We have seen many other instances across government where presidential intervention has been necessary to sell and explain policy, resolve disputes and clear up misunderstandings.
The President, in many instances, has impressed with his mastery of various subjects, but we can also conclude that he is being overworked because most of the people he has placed to lead various dockets are not living up to expectation.
President Ruto is a hands-on leader with intimate knowledge of the finer workings of his administration, but that is not necessarily a plus because it might show a control freak, a manager who wants to handle all the tiny details himself and not leave room for juniors to do their jobs.
The President, in this regard, might remind us of President Daniel arap Moi, a leader obsessed with command and control, who wanted all the glory, and unashamedly projected himself as Farmer Number 1, Teacher Number 1, Footballer Number 1 and everything else Numero Uno.
One problem with leaders who forever want to hog the limelight is that they not only take individual credit for the successes, but also blame for failures.
President Ruto might do well to remember that only recently when the Gen Z protests against high taxation flared up, he was the one firmly in the cross-hairs. The then CS for National Treasury Njuguna Ndung’u was nowhere in the picture as it was the President seen to own economic policy and the contentious Finance Bill 2024.
This obsession can be seen with the accelerated appointments of senior advisors to State House. Just over the weekend President Ruto brought back discarded CSs Eliud Owalo and Moses Kuria to senior advisory positions, the former as deputy chief of staff in charge of performance and delivery management and the latter as senior advisor on economic policy.
Additionally, long-time social media propaganda lead Dennis Itumbi was finally given a substantive office as head of the Creative Economy and Special Projects in the Office of the President. It’s not clear what “special projects” entails, but one can hazard a guess that it’s continuation of the social media dirty tricks.
The appointments show the President reneging on his pledge to slash the number of advisors in government as part of a cost-cutting programme. But even more worrying, they indicate concentration of power on his office.
Cabinet secretaries are being reduced to impotence as they forever have to second-guess the advice President Ruto is getting from fellows who enjoy much more direct access from where the government is run — State House.
