There’s a weird tension in the air today—maybe it’s just the humidity, but you can feel it. Ndindi Nyoro, the Kiharu MP, finally blew the lid off something that’s been bothering a lot of people lately. He’s out there saying the government is basically playing games with the numbers, specifically when it comes to what we call ‘securitisation.’
According to Misryoum, the lawmaker didn’t hold back during his Tuesday briefing in Nairobi. He is flat-out calling the government’s approach a deliberate misrepresentation. You hear ‘securitisation’ and it sounds like some dry, technical finance term, but Nyoro insists it’s just jargon meant to—well, hide illegal borrowing. It’s like, how much debt can you bury under a fancy name before someone notices? He claims that even the big international lenders like the IMF and the World Bank are starting to agree that these funds should be sitting on the books as debt, not floating around in some gray area.
The National Treasury, of course, has been singing a different tune. They’ve been arguing that leveraging things like Fuel Levies or the Railway Development Levy isn’t exactly the same as walking into a bank and taking out a loan. But Nyoro isn’t buying it. Not for a second. He thinks this lack of clarity is distorting the whole picture of where the country actually stands financially. We are looking at a debt pile sitting around Sh13 trillion, which is a massive number—too big to just pretend it’s not there or hide it behind accounting tricks.
It’s a bit frustrating, honestly. The whole debate feels like we are running in circles.
Then there’s the trip to Washington. Nyoro was visibly annoyed about the government sending a delegation there just to get ‘clarity’ on this. He thinks it was a complete waste of tax money, especially when he claims everyone at home already knew what the deal was. It’s like traveling across the ocean to ask for the time when your watch is right there on your wrist—actually, maybe that’s a bad comparison, but you get the point. He says the officials are just experimenting with our future instead of being straight with us about the constitutional requirements for financial transparency.
He wants them to stop, just stop. You can tell he’s tired of the excuses. Whether the Treasury will pivot or just dig in their heels remains to be seen—I suspect they’ll keep doing what they’re doing for a while longer, unfortunately. It’s a mess, really, and it makes you wonder who’s actually watching the store while all this ‘securitisation’ talk happens.