Cabinet Secretary Rebecca Miano finds herself at the centre of growing public anger over the massive Bomas International Convention Centre project, a scheme whose cost has ballooned and whose key documents remain locked away from the very ministry meant to own and fund it.
When a Cabinet Secretary stands before senators and admits that the construction contract, procurement papers and technical records sit with the Ministry of Defence while her own Tourism ministry pays the bills and waits to take ownership, something is deeply wrong.
The project started with talk of Sh31.7 billion. It has now climbed past Sh45 billion. That is not a small adjustment.
That is public money, collected through the Tourism Fund, being spent on a facility that is supposed to turn Kenya into a top conference destination. Yet the people charged with watching over that money cannot even produce the main contract.
Miano told the Senate committee that Defence handles the contracting and day-to-day supervision because of earlier Cabinet decisions.
She said her ministry only monitors progress and prepares for eventual ownership. Monitoring without the contract is not monitoring. It is guesswork.
Senators asked the obvious question: how do you track a project when the papers are held by another ministry?
The answer was silence dressed up as procedure. This is not the first time Miano has faced pressure over Bomas.
Earlier this year parliamentary committees had to summon her after she skipped meetings or sent juniors who could not answer basic questions.
She once claimed the issues had already been covered in written replies. Parliament rejected that excuse.
Cabinet Secretaries are not free to decide when they will answer to the people’s representatives. The pattern of delay and incomplete information has only fuelled suspicion that the true cost, the true contractors and the true beneficiaries are being shielded from public view.
Kenyans know what happens when big projects are wrapped in secrecy. Money disappears. Deadlines slip. Ordinary citizens pay the price through higher taxes and fewer services.
Here the secrecy is especially troubling because Defence is involved in a pure tourism and culture facility.
Defence has its own heavy responsibilities. Using military structures for a civilian conference centre raises hard questions about transparency, competitive bidding and civilian oversight.
If everything is above board, the contract should be on the table. The payment records should be open. The variation orders that pushed the cost from Sh31.7 billion to Sh45 billion should be explained in plain language.
Miano is not a junior officer. She is a Cabinet Secretary with years of experience in high office. She once ran KenGen. She has moved through several ministries.
She understands how government works. That is why her inability, or refusal, to produce the central documents is so damaging. It suggests either that the system is deliberately designed to keep the public in the dark or that no one is truly in charge.
The Bomas project was sold to Kenyans as a flagship that would create jobs, attract international meetings and put Nairobi on the global map. Instead it has become another example of how public money can be spent while accountability is pushed from one ministry to another.
Tourism Fund money is not free money. It comes from the same hard-working Kenyans who struggle with the cost of living. They deserve to know exactly who is building what, at what price, and under what terms.
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