Professor Makau Mutua has turned down a job offer from Deputy President William Ruto.
Through his article in the Sunday Nation, Prof Mutua says that a top commander in DP Ruto’s campaign locomotive had begged him to work with them to ensure that the second in command clinches to the topmost political seat come 2022.
He says that the DP Ruto’s campaign team should read from his lips.
While responding to the offer, Mutua says that he cannot,and that he will not work with the DP.
He further notes that whenever he hears the mention of Mr Ruto, or sense his proximity, he heads in the opposite direction, noting that it has been so since Ruto’s emergence in Youth for Kanu ’92.
Mutua notes that the case on crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court cemented his political disdain for Mr Ruto.
He also says that Ruto volubly and vigorously led the No Campaign against the 2010 Constitution, and has been alleged to be involved in a number of corruption scandals.
In at least one case, Prof Mutua says, a court found Ruto liable for buying the grabbed farm of one Adrian Muteshi amidst the 2007-2008 poll violence. He says Ruto was forced to return the farm to Mr Muteshi.
Mutua also mentions unsolved crimes that have focused investigation on DP Ruto’s office.
He cites the most recent case where Sgt Kipyegon Kenei, a senior policeman in DP Ruto’s Harambee House Annex office, was murdered in mysterious circumstances hot on the heels of former sports Cabinet Secretary Rashid Echesa’s arms scandal.
Further, Mutua says that given DP Ruto’s anti-democratic legacy and the allegations of corruption, it stretches credulity that any legitimate civil society organisation – let alone the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC),would ever have anything to do with him.
“It is an open secret Mr Ruto and his brain-trust have targeted civil society groups like the KHRC to penetrate, convert, and instrumentalise them into witting, or unwitting, allies. It is in this context that they’ve approached me and others. This can only happen over my dead body. Mr Ruto can forget civil society,” he says in his article.
