Wavinya Ndeti Acquires Chopper As Questions Arise Over New Properties And Son’s Overnight Wealth

She arrived in power in August 2022 as Machakos County’s first female governor, riding a wave of popular goodwill and lofty promises of transformation.

Less than four years later, Wavinya Ndeti stands at the centre of a scorching corruption storm, accused of presiding over a brazen scheme of self-enrichment that investigators say has drained hundreds of millions of shillings from a county where hospital shelves run bare, streets go dark and workers have not seen a pay cheque in nearly two years.

The latest flashpoint is the emergence of a private helicopter that sources say the governor and her son Charles Oduwole have been using for personal travel.

The acquisition of the aircraft, the value of which insiders put in the tens of millions of shillings, has detonated fresh outrage in a county already convulsed by revelations about an empire of farms, apartments, petrol stations, media houses and ranches that critics allege have been built not on personal enterprise but on the systematic looting of public coffers.

The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission has confirmed, through sources familiar with its investigations, that it is building a case against the governor and her son over massive graft linked to inflated contracts, single-sourced tenders, money laundering and the misuse of public funds. No arrests have been made, and the governor has flatly denied all wrongdoing.

“We see these roads falling apart within months yet we are told millions were spent. Where did the money go?”

According to a detailed dossier circulating among county officials and now in the hands of investigators, the alleged enrichment began with agriculture. Ndeti is accused of using county equipment and staff to develop an extensive farm at Kwa Mboo in Kinanie, constructing a private dam under the cover of a public water project. The farm, sources say, now supplies vegetables to county hospitals at inflated prices, turning public procurement into a private revenue stream.

From farming, the allegations extend into real estate. Ndeti is accused of constructing Mwaitu Apartments in Athi River using county staff, equipment and materials sourced through the county housing department, at zero personal cost. She has reportedly also acquired three houses in London. In the energy sector, insiders allege she used a Somali businessman as a front to gain control of the Shell petrol station at Sabaki, Mavoko, where county vehicles are fuelled, creating a tidy loop through which public funds flow back to private pockets.

The alleged diversification does not end there. Ndeti is said to have acquired Mutongoi TV and radio stations in Machakos town, a flour milling company in Masii that has since expanded to Mombasa and now operates a fleet of 30 lorries, and a 5,000-acre ranch in neighbouring Kitui County, complete with a dam and three boreholes sunk using Machakos county equipment. The Kitui ranch, sources claim, now serves as the sole supplier of beef to Machakos county hospitals and the Machakos Youth Service.

A palatial residence at Kinanie, built by a contractor who sources say was paid through county funds with materials donated by companies in Mavoko, completes a personal portfolio that critics say could not plausibly have been assembled on a governor’s salary. Currently, county equipment from the agriculture and urban departments is reportedly being deployed at Kinanie to construct fish ponds whose produce will be supplied back to county hospitals.

THE SON WHO BECAME A BILLIONAIRE

If the allegations against the governor are explosive, those swirling around her son Charles Oduwole are arguably more incendiary. The young man, a dual UK-Kenyan citizen, has emerged as one of the most controversial figures in Machakos county politics, enriched, his critics say, through a monopoly on county contracts that appears to have been granted through the back door of his mother’s office.

Oduwole is identified as the sole supplier of software and hardware, information, communication and telecommunications equipment to the county government. He is alleged to have supplied the county with its revenue software system and all associated hardware, with his proxy companies paid well before works are completed or deliveries confirmed. The arrangement, insiders say, allows millions to be extracted from public accounts with minimal accountability.

At the centre of EACC’s probe is Kayleaf Tours and Travel Company Limited, a firm linked to Oduwole and his associate Osman Salat, also known as Ali. Registered shortly after Ndeti assumed the governorship, Kayleaf is alleged to have monopolised all travel contracts for the county without competitive bidding, charging up to 20 times the market rate for airline tickets. Investigators say the company processed travel for the governor’s family, including private trips abroad, while billing the county as official business. Fake invoices, EACC sources allege, were used to siphon millions through carefully orchestrated channels, with funds traced to international accounts held under multiple aliases connected to Oduwole.

The optics on the ground are hard to explain away. Oduwole was recently photographed behind the wheel of a Sh40 million Lexus. He has reportedly purchased a house in Karen, Nairobi, for Sh200 million. Part of the governor’s armed security detail has been redeployed to provide him personal protection, and when he is not being driven in a county vehicle by a county-paid driver, he is in the Lexus. Mother and son are additionally accused of selling county contracts to the highest bidders, with quarry revenues across the county said to be diverted from public accounts into private ones through a system that manipulates revenue reporting.

The EACC is building a case over massive graft linked to inflated contracts, single-sourced tenders and money laundering. No arrests have been made.

The financial carnage in the county is stark. Machakos’ pending bills have surged to Sh6.8 billion in under three years, up from Sh2.1 billion inherited from Alfred Mutua’s two terms, according to data from internal finance discussions.

The Controller of Budget has warned that such levels threaten service delivery and long-term fiscal stability. Legitimate contractors who completed roads and buildings to specification say they have been waiting months for payment while companies linked to the governor’s network were settled within days. Some county staff have gone for close to two years without salaries. Hospitals report chronic drug shortages. Street lights stay off.

In September 2024, reports emerged that Ndeti and her son had been detained in the United Kingdom in connection with an attempt to deposit what some accounts put at Sh679 million at a London bank.

British anti-fraud officials are said to have questioned Charles Oduwole over the transaction. The governor denied the reports categorically, insisting her overseas travel was for official and family business, and she secured a criminal prosecution against a former Wiper youth official who had publicised the claims on social media, charging him under the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act. The UK incident did not result in disclosed charges, but it sharpened scrutiny of her family’s financial dealings to an intensity that has not since abated.

More recently, fresh details emerged in February 2026 that Ndeti funnelled over Sh350 million to companies linked to herself through proxies and business partners, for road projects that contractors say were shoddily executed or remain incomplete. Multiple contractors told investigators they described a procurement system seized directly from the top, with the governor personally directing tender awards, influencing evaluation committees and approving payments to favoured firms while legitimate claimants languished unpaid.

Internally, the political temperature has been rising. In March 2025, Muthwani MCA Dominic Maitha threatened an impeachment motion, accusing Ndeti of corruption, nepotism, ghost workers and inflating the county wage bill to over Sh500 million a month.

A faction of MCAs allied to County Assembly Speaker Anne Kiusya has separately demanded a forensic audit of all county expenditure since Ndeti took office, accusing her allies of targeting Kiusya with impeachment precisely because she refused to rubber-stamp irregular spending. The MCAs have also questioned the source of Sh20 million allegedly used to mobilise crowds for political rallies in the county.

In a statement, Governor Ndeti denied all the allegations of impropriety. She insisted that her administration has delivered nearly 1,000 projects since August 2022 and pointed to record own-source revenue collection of Sh1.7 billion in the 2023-2024 financial year as evidence of transparent stewardship. She described the allegations as a politically engineered smear campaign designed to undermine the transformative work of her government and distract her from serving the people of Machakos. She dismissed reports of the UK detention as fabricated narratives sponsored by political opponents.

The governor has not been shy about acting against corruption within her own ranks when it serves her purposes.

In September 2025 she suspended 36 county officials, forwarding their names to the DCI and EACC for prosecution over underreporting of fees, issuance of fake permits and diversion of revenue. The move was applauded by some observers and derided by others as a performative gesture designed to create the impression of a clean administration while the larger alleged scheme of self-enrichment continued unimpeded.

The question that civil society groups, opposition politicians and an increasingly restive Machakos public are now asking out loud is: who is protecting Wavinya Ndeti at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations and the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission? With the EACC said to be building an arrest file, and with a governor who has repeatedly survived scandal by going on the offensive, the answer may determine not only her political future but the future of the county she governs.