You have crossed the Red line: Raphael Tuju tells DP Ruto

Jubilee Party Secretary General Raphael Tuju has sent out salvos at Deputy President William Ruto over, among a myriad of other things, recent public disclosures about his multi-billion assets.

The attack on the second in command comes heels on after Interior Cabinet Secretary Dr. Fred Matiang’i recently revealed some of DP Ruto’s state protected properties.

The conversation was sparked by an uproar by some leaders allied to deputy president who condemned the security reshuffling of Ruto’s protection units terming it an open form of mistreatment the second in command is facing from state organs. In an unending series of rallies and online campaign, the leaders equated the string of events to Ruto’s strained relationship with his boss citing the Dp’s continued campaign against the annulled BBI that irked his boss who went ahead to ask him to resign if he was not satisfied with the way the government was running. The president accused his deputy of speaking from both mouths.

Tuju, in a brutally blunt statement delivered on Monday, seemingly took a swipe at the DP over how fast he has managed to grow his wealth within a span of 7 years.

Tuju said the DP in 2015 was worth Ksh.100 million, only for it to now emerge, following CS Matiang’i’s revelations, that he could actually be worth billions.

“By his own accounts, the deputy president is on video record when he told Kenyans that he was worth Ksh.100 million some time in 2015. In the intervening 7 years, he has worked very hard in his businesses and now therefore he has assets like choppers, hotels, and land worth billions of shillings,” he said.

“We would like to congratulate Dr. Ruto for being able to make such amazing strides in business even as he was studying for his PhD concurrently with running a multi-billion shilling empire and carrying the heavy burden of working as number two in command and being involved in presidential campaigns on his Sundays, still sparing time to do harambees from his hard-earned sweat money. From our records, he has been more generous than Safaricom and other bluechip companies.”

Tuju said that by Ruto acknowledging ownership of at least 3,600 acres of land, the deputy president ought to practice the Chinese saying of  ‘do not give fish but show somebody how to fish,’ urging him to hence demonstrate to young people the skills necessary to achieve the same feat.

“May it please the deputy president Dr. William Ruto EGH, UPL, DL, CH to show these young people all the skills and how to acquire such property in such a short time. He should teach us, the clueless adults in this country, how we can do the same,” said Tuju.

“We may not possess the supernatural powers of hard work that he has but at least he should teach us something else apart from the wheelbarrows, show us another way to perform such miracles.”

Tuju also accused DP Ruto of blackmailing the President Uhuru Kenyatta-led government between 2013 to 2017 for his own selfish reasons.

According to the Jubilee Secretary General, President Kenyatta is a highly tolerant person and accommodative of the DP despite all this alleged blackmail, instead focusing on his development agenda.

He sent a public warning to DP Ruto for allegedly perpetrating a social media attack against Mzee Jomo Kenyatta through his cronies, urging him to call his house to order.

“Not only can the DP no longer blackmail Kenyans, the people of Kenya will not accept to be blackmailed. In this latest saga on his security detail, we would like to congratulate our deputy party leader William Ruto for his honesty to admit that he himself is a very rich hustler. Mgala muue lakini haki yake mpe, as Kiswahili people would say,” said Tuju.

“It was an admirable display of optics and demeanour of humility before his real self and ego came back as he launched a scathing social media attack executed by his foul-mouthed political mouth pieces and bloggers with most of the vitriol directed at the person and family of the founding father of our nation, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, who is not here to defend himself.”

He added: “As a party, we’re sending the deputy president a public statement that we will not countenance his venturing into crossing this line of referring to the family of the late president Mzee Jomo Kenyatta. He must call his goons to order, we continue to resist a lot of provocation luring us to go into the slimy and smelly social pig stay that some of his people occupy.”

Tuju further asked the deputy president to publicly reveal his tax payments with the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) to match with his confession of making Ksh.1.5 million from his chicken farm.

“And then there’s the small matter of Arror/Kimwarer saga. The DP told Kenyans that only Ksh.7 billion had disappeared, his own daughter was the deputy ambassador in Rome at that time. To our knowledge, this money has never been returned by the Italians,” he said.

“Since he has got some private business networks in Italy that he had gone to meet, would he be so mind to this nation of poor people, nation of hustlers according to him, as to use his vast business networks to recover this money. It is a lot of money even though he referred to the figure as Ksh.7 billion only. Even with the DP’s chicken farm income of Ksh.1.5 million net a day, it will take some 13 years before that chicken farm produces Ksh.7 billion.”

Tuju added: “We request a truthful response of the DP to these matters raised for the sake of Kenyans. The time is over for cheap media spin-doctoring as we witnessed recently that he will even accept the G4S Security. Now that we know the G4S are his standard, it should be easy to calculate the price per askari who were posted to his private properties during the era of blackmail stock options and have it paid to Kenyan tax payers. May be we can also extend that little refund to Wanjiku.”