Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has slammed the National Intelligence Service, claiming that it failed to inform the President of the imminent deadly mass protests on Tuesday.
Speaking on Wednesday evening at his residence in Mombasa, the DP said that NIS chief Noordin Haji failed to notify the President about the extent of the protests in time to prevent massive bloodshed and loss of life.
“And I sympathise with my boss President William Ruto because this information was not available to him,” Gachagua said.
The DP said following this very critical oversight, Haji should do the most honourable thing and resign.
“We have a dysfunctional National Intelligence Service that has exposed the President, the government and the people of Kenya,” he claimed.
“Had the National Intelligence Service briefed the President two months ago about how the people feel about the Finance Bill, 2024, so many Kenyans would not have died, property would not have been destroyed, offices would not have been destroyed. There would have been no mayhem, but they slept on the job.”
Gachagua said it had to take nationwide protests for the president to know the truth about how people felt about the proposed new taxes in the Bill “yet there is an organisation paid for by the public to brief the President and the government about the feeling of the Kenyan people”.
The DP also said that senior National Police Service personnel confided in him that they had no prior knowledge of the magnitude of the protests, which were mostly planned by Gen Z.
He stated that as a result, the security forces deployed to disperse the protests were caught off guard by the intensity of the demonstrations.
