A senior government engineer in has resigned after he was reportedly about to be arrested, and the man at the center of this storm is Engineer David Mugweru, who was the Deputy Director in charge of Roadside Development at the Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA) and left his job just three weeks ago.
Sources say he got inside information that the police were coming for him, but the reason for his fear is even more troubling because Engineer Mugweru is accused of turning a public agency into a family business and is called the mastermind behind deep-rooted nepotism at KeNHA.
The most shocking example is a public toilet, yes a toilet, because just weeks before he quit, Mugweru gave a very profitable contract to build a public toilet in Roysambu, and the company that got the deal is called Omoka Ltd, which is owned by Mugwerus own brother Alphaxand Nganga, meaning that when you heard about the drama of stalls being demolished in Roysambu, it was all reportedly because of a fight over this toilet contract.
But the scheme did not stop there, as Mugweru also gave his brother more tenders for putting up big billboards along the busy Thika Superhighway, turning a program that was meant to help young people and special groups in Kenya into a private family bank account where millions of shillings are at stake, and Mugweru is also accused of being the main person who benefits from the roadside spaces between Roysambu and Thika, collecting huge sums of money every month.
He was not working alone, because another senior official named Engineer Christopher Nzioka, who is the Deputy Director of Road Reserve and Maintenance at KeNHA, is said to be working with Mugweru and his brother, and together they are accused of turning public land into a private business.
This story raises a hard question, and one comment from a Kenyan citizen on social media said it best by asking how a deputy director can bypass or coerce all the people in the committees involved in every public procurement process and personally award tenders, and then asking people to imagine what a Cabinet Secretary or higher official could do.
If one deputy director can secretly control a major government agency and give contracts to his own brother, then what happens at higher levels is a real concern, and this is not a small mistake but a direct theft of opportunity from the Kenyan people.
The authorities cannot look away, because the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), and KeNHA itself must now act with speed, and even though Engineer Mugweru may have resigned, that does not erase the job he did.
The public demands that Engineer Nzioka, Omoka Ltd, and anyone else involved be dealt with firmly, because if not, then no Kenyan can ever trust that a road, a sign, or even a public toilet is built for them and not for an officials brother.
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