Former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has turned up the heat on his former boss, lifting the lid on what he describes as President William Ruto’s insatiable appetite for kickbacks in major government projects.
At the center of the storm is the Rironi–Mau Summit Road, one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects Kenya has seen in recent years. The Kenyan government awarded a Chinese construction company a multi-billion shilling tender to dual the 175-kilometre stretch into a four-lane carriageway—a project estimated to cost approximately KSh 200 billion, equivalent to between $1.4 billion and $2.25 billion. President Ruto himself launched the project with much fanfare in November 2025.
But according to Gachagua, what has been happening behind the scenes tells a very different story.
Speaking in Nairobi during the unveiling of Democracy for Citizens Party (DCP) candidate Kamau Ngotho—who will fly the party’s flag in the upcoming Ol Kalou parliamentary by-election—Gachagua dropped a bombshell, claiming that the contract for the project has never been signed because Ruto is sitting on it, waiting for a cash bribe of KSh 17 billion to be delivered to him personally by the Chinese company.
“There is no contract yet for the construction of the Rironi–Mau Summit highway because William Ruto wants an upfront bribe of KSh 17 billion delivered to him in cash,” Gachagua said bluntly.
The project is structured as a public-private partnership between the China Road and Bridge Corporation and the National Social Security Fund (NSSF), meaning ordinary Kenyans—including NSSF contributors—have a direct stake in seeing it delivered efficiently and transparently.
And it is ordinary Kenyans who will also foot the bill once the road is complete. According to the Kenya National Highways Authority(KENHA), motorists will be charged approximately KSh 8 per kilometre, which means a single one-way trip along the full stretch could set a passenger car back roughly KSh 1,400.
If Gachagua’s claims hold any water, the picture that emerges is damning — a sitting president allegedly holding a transformative national project hostage, not for the public good, but for personal gain. As Gachagua put it, this is not the behaviour of a president. It is the behaviour of a businessman.
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