Interior CS Fred Matiang’i has accused a section of legislators in Deputy President William Ruto’s backyard of using the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) to fund bandits.
In an interview with NTV on Sunday, April 17, Matiang’i said a majority of elected leaders in the North Rift region of Baringo and Laikipia had resorted to using CDF kitty to buy firearms for their people to fight.
“There is a big problem in that part of our country. In that part of the country, most of the North Rift has problems right now, truth be told there is poor political leadership where the focus is encouraging them to fight.
“Some politicians in that part of the country even spent CDF resources to buy bullets for their people,” the Interior CS said.
Matiang’i said it was unfortunate that the leaders in that region understand well why there exist endless fights in the never-ending conflict in the war-torn zones.
According to Matiang’i the leaders arming their people think that buying local firearms will make them superior ahead of the August 9, General Election.
“They believe that in either arming their people, they are giving them security or in arming them against their neighbors they are demonstrating their sense of superiority,” the CS stated.
Matiang’i however assured locals that the government is working to ensure it ends the insecurity in the region saying that they have arrested several leaders and that there are active court cases going on.
“We have several of them in courts. There are several court cases going on right now and once we cross over to that then my power ends,” he added.
Appearing before National Assembly Security Committee two weeks ago, Interior CS attributed this to the political instability in the neighboring countries which makes it easy for bandits to access weapons.
“The conflict we have in North Rift is not a hardcore driven crime, these are the people who are taking the cattle rustling vice too far just because they can access small arms that are taken through our porous borders,” Matiangi stated.