When the Nairobi County Assembly’s Speaker Beatrice Elachi was impeached, one man was outstanding, when the high court overturned the impeachment, one man led the team of unruly, drunk MCAs to storm and attempt forceful eviction from the office of speaker. That one man is Abdi Guyo, the assembly’s majority leader who’s in our view and all approximations, the most powerful man at city hall.
Just to give an hint of who we’re dealing with, unlike the norms, Guyo is the only majority leader in the country with a chase car and officially assigned five police bodyguards which we’re told is from his good relations with the Police IG Boinnet who must have such an irresponsible and unworthy allocation. When the country is struggling with insecurity, it is utterly stupid to allocate a mere majority leader with five bodyguards when he not only don’t deserve but illegal in all aspects. Guyo also rides on a brand new Toyota Prado which we learn he’s using a private number plate yet it is County’s car.
Suspended Nairobi County Assembly Clerk Jacob Ngwele and Abdi Guyo are the ringleaders of a gang of officers behind corruption and theft of public funds at the scandal ridden assembly, we can reveal today.
Ngwele, who was recently suspended from office after he was charged with corruption, is still pulling the strings and controlling all deals and actions by MCAs at the assembly backed by Guyo who’s now calling the shots at City Hall as the Speaker is not functionally in office.
Ngwele operates through his henchmen Majority Leader Abdi Guyo and Minority leader Elias Otieno, who are his co-members of the County Assembly Board.
According to our investigations, Ngwele is the brainchild of most corrupt deals at the assembly and uses Guyo and Otieno to cover up his tracks and also contain MCAs.
Guyo, the Jubilee MCA for Matopeni Ward in Kamukunji, is Ngwele’s right hand man. He is also very powerful and boasts of close ties to Deputy President William Ruto, National assembly Majority Leader Aden Duale and EACC CEO Halakhe Waqo. We’re informed that Guyo and EACC’s CEO on Wednesday held a meeting at Serena Hotel and advised the scandal ridden majority leader to write a letter to the anti corruption body.
The two men who’re from the same clan in Isiolo allegedly hatched an escape plan and that the letter was to ask EACC to return the issue to the privilege committee plus Halakhe to ask his officials to go slow on Nairobi county corruption scandals. This by all angles is not only exposing the corruption at the anti corruption body but putting in line the integrity of Halakhe.
Moreover, the CEO is not new to suspicious deals, a lobby group wrote to the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, lnfrastructure and Urban Development James Macharia to investigate an alleged grabbing of land belonging to the ministry by Ethics and Anti-corruption boss Dr Halakhe Wako in Isiolo.
In the undated letter received by the ministry on 29th March, 2018, Coalition of Citizens against Land Grabbing wanted the Cabinet Secretary to investigate the circumstances under which the land located in Isiolo and which is the property of Public Works Department of the ministry ended up in Waqo’s hands.
The lobby said in the letter that the EACC director general has gone ahead to erect a six storey building on the land. Further the lobbyists alleged that Waqo has also grabbed a 31 acres of land belonging to a community trust at Camp Garba in the same county.
In yet another case, a former Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) investigator linked the anti-graft body’s Chief Executive Officer Halakhe Waqo to the controversial acquittal of individuals associated with the 2015 National Youth Service (NYS) scandal.
Adan Moro Guracha, through a suit filed at the Employment and Labour Relations Court to contest his sacking, alleged that Mr Waqo interfered with several corruption cases by receiving kickbacks, including allegations that he was paid Sh300 million to end the first NYS scandal that led to the loss of Sh796 million.
Instructively, Guyo is the only County assembly majority leader with a chase car and five bodyguards, signaling his connections to powerful people in the Kenyan government.
Ngwele and Guyo control all tenders and contracts at the assembly and has become fabulously wealthy in the short period he has been the majority leader.
According to an MCA who spoke on condition of anonymity, Guyo is behind the impeachment motion against Counthy Speaker Beatrice Elachi.
“Imagine he can even give county assembly workers orders to lock out Elachi from her offices even after High Court reinstated her after the vote of no confidence,” said the elected MCA, who is among the MCAs who have since shifted their allegiance to the embattled speaker.
Ngwele, who is very wealthy and cunning, has secretly recorded Guyo in compromising situations, allowing him to manipulate the MCA.
Ngwele has also curiously built high end apartments in See Far Apartments in Highrise Nairobi. He is also building a commercial building in Nairobi.
A case in point is the kickback payments he received in the dubious payments to Kensun Enterprises which carried out renovations to the County assembly Chambers.
Another area he stole from the assembly is through exaggerated legal fee notes. “Services such as drafting of Bills are being outsources at highly inflated costs when such services can easily be done by Assembly employees in legal department,’ said our source.
The source cited the case of Muthama Karanja Advocates which represented the assembly in a case with the executive arm of the Nairobi County. The case has been withdrawn but the law firm is still demanding to be paid Shs 2.9 million.
According to our source, Ngwele has infiltrated the DCI, Devolution ministry an EACC where compromised officers leak to him secrets. That’s why he recently evaded arrest.
Ngwele went missing for a few days after DCI officers leaked to him his impending arrest after Director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Haji ordered his arrest.
Haji also ordered the arrest of four other senior county officials over the irregular awarding of a tender. Ngwele escaped a DCI dragnet at the assembly, where three of his colleagues were arrested.
Ngwele, four staff and a proprietor of a firm have been accused of defrauding the county through unscrupulous tendering.
“ he disappeared when people were being arrested and reemerged when others had appeared in court,” said a source close to the issue.
Another curious issue is that the advocate who represented Ngwele in court is an employee of the county assembly, in a case of conflict of interest.
Ngwele is also on the spot over recent retreat for MCAs to Mombasa, which was unbudgeted for and unnecessary.
The County Assembly spent 22 million to take the MCAs for a second induction workshop.
The source posed: “How do you go for induction twice? It was not in the budget and was only a bribe to MCAs.”
An MCA also complained Ngwele and Guyo uses membership to committees and foreign trips to influence MCAs to support their corrupt dealings.
He said: “Some MCAs have never gone for trips but those close to the cartel like Antony Kiragu have gone for over ten trips.”
Another member of the cartel is Titus Kitetu who is Ngwele’s handyman. He is the one who withdraws or picks bribes for him.
Ngwele and Guyo are also accused of practicing nepotism when it comes to employment at the assembly.
“You can only get a job at the assembly if you are related to Ngwele or Guyo,” said the source. “That’s why Ngwele’s sister is the one running the assembly kitchen.”
A source intimates to Kenya Insights that the City Hall’s fiasco is due to displeasure by the Governor on the removal of Ngwele. When we posed a question to one of the MCAs whom we spoke to on anonymous grounds as to why the Speaker was impeached, he was very categorical, “because of Ngwele, he was the boss’s henchman and for him, the whole assembly would rather go down than have his person ousted.”
Ngwele’s approval into office is bravely questionable, he moved from the National Assembly into the county’s and his position was done in the shoddiest terms. It wasn’t advertised as it should be in normal process, his appointment didn’t adhere to legal terms and was basically handpicked with approvals from the Guyos. This matter must also be investigated since this man was illegally appointed meaning he’s been receiving money illegally from the office. It should be noted that at one point, Ngwele was receiving double salaries both from the National Assembly and the County’s before he finally resigned from the former. Curiously, Ngwele was approved through a court before officially resigning from the national assembly’s job.
Many questions now hangs as to why the jubilee party can’t strike and reign discipline as Nairobi County runs blisters. At one point after Ngwele’s arrest, Guyo and Otieno went to the DCI in attenpbto dissuade the director to drop cases against Ngwele. We learn this was out of pressure from Ngwele who’s holding the two and others at ransom with his recorded tapes implicating them in corrupt deals, Ngwele just like Sonko, secretly records most of his deals.
Just after the removal of the speaker, our sources at City Hall intimates that the members have gone on spending overdrive. As a condition during the impeachment of the speaker, members were blackmailed and coerced into voting. MCAs we’re threatened with exclusion from committees and foreign trips if they didn’t vote out the speaker.
As we speak, about 30 Nairobi MCAs are on foreign trips which are more of vacations. There’s a group in Zanzibar to learn how to dance, that’s how stupid this is. As the country struggles to control the debt weight, some are exploiting. It should reach the President and the Governor Of Nairobi whim we’re convinced knows the games at City Hall on the overspending at City Hall.
The county government has not been meeting targets and fears that it might be going broke. Biggest failure is mismanagement, unnecessary trips must be capped, a leash must be put, does this county even have controller of budget? An MCA talking to us, raised a red flag that if things continues the same and no controls put over spendings then the county faces imminent failure.
Nairobi County Assembly has asked the Labour Court to lift orders which shielded speaker Beatrice Elachi from impeachment.
The assembly through Senior lawyer Prof. Tom Ojienda argued that the case filed by Elachi was defective as she had not sworn an affidavit to support it.
Prof Tom Ojienda is not new to City Hall fiascos as he’s been their representative, the lawyer had initially demanded a cumulative Sh1.84 billion in fees for representing the county government in five suits, in 2014, one of which was filed by the current governor, Mike Sonko.
City Hall had challenged the amounts before the High Court’s taxing master, who whittled down the amount to Sh264 million.
According to our sources, Ojienda enjoys positive relationships with most of the top ranked at the City Hall and will make s killing out of such cases. Guyo who’s nicknamed Mr. 10% out of his love for kickbacks allegedly, is said to have played role in the previous assembly to push for Ojienda’s payments in which allegedly, he was guaranteed his 10% cut. Everything connects with Guyo being at the forefront in the impeachment of the speaker now.
Relationship between Guyo and Halakhe must be investigated as it undermines the investigations and inline promoting corruption at City Hall . Why’s the DPP holding his horses while the time is ripe for execution? Why’s the President and the Jubilee Party not stamping it’s authority while the County is being mismanaged? Ngwele,Guyo and the rest of marked officials must be investigated, prosecuted and jailed as there’s enough evidence to ascertain all these.
Our eye on City Hall continues.
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