Mr President, the State is helpless if matatu owners ground their vehicles

Matatus parked along Jogoo road during the Matatu country-wide strike on fuel hike in Nairobi on May 18, 2026. [Boniface Okendo, Standard]

The roughly 36-hour-long fuel protests by Matatu operators at the start of this week has exposed the long-term costs of corruption and ineptitude in government. The public spectacle on Monday evening before two powerful cabinet secretaries is unimaginable in ordinary times.

Yet, an ordinary man unceremoniously dissolved a high-stakes press briefing with the now-famous ‘with all due respect’ statement. To the ordinary eye, it may pass as another comic event in our never-ending public comedy on the management of public affairs. However, from a critical point of view, that moment demonstrated how the levers of power are tilted in favour of ruthless cartels that control public transport in the country.

Implicitly, the government is completely helpless if matatu owners withdraw their vehicles from the road. The economy will simply grind to a naught until the government yields something to appease these powerful cartels. The choice of Governor Johnson Sakaja as their preferred patron over the ceasefire deal is no random either. These power dealers have significant influence on the city’s politics and electoral outcomes.

Tough wars over bus terminus within the Central Business District (CBD) can end any non-aligned political career long before it even started. The question to ask then is: why, when and how did the power shift from government to matatu owners over the country’s public transport system? The answer is partly because the government killed public transport system that served the city through plunder and ineptitude.

Out of curiosity, I sought to educate myself on the evolution of public transport system in the country following this weeks crisis. In a country where public officials are idolised, how could seemingly ordinary men wield such enormous power against the government? In a previous article, this column described acknowledgements on the amount of power matatu owners have by the updated Integrated National Transport Policy of 2024.

A casual google search evidence indicates that the Nairobi City Council bought a 25 per cent stake in Kenya Bus Services in 1966 from United Transport Overseas (a colonial company), in exchange of a 25-year public transport monopoly in the city. While the company faced myriad financial and operational challenges, it must be this lineage and its successor outfit that operated the Stagecoach/Kenya bus services that if found in their sunset days when I became a resident of the city back in 1998.

However, in 1986, the national government intervened by establishing a wholly public-owned company, Nyayo Bus Services, to bring about competition and affordability in public transport. Data indicates that the company operated at least 300 buses at its peak. These buses were mainly donated by Italy, Denmark and Belgium.

Despite operating donated buses, the company ceased operation in under a decade, with the then Auditor General declaring it insolvent if 1995. The auditor cited mismanagement and lack of maintenance as the two principal reasons for the collapse. Public officials who killed these alternate affordable transport lacked foresight of the consequences of their actions to successor governments.

There is persuasive evidence that the world’s most successful and livable cities rely on publicly controlled or highly integrated public transport authority. These recurrent public transport crises exposes the failures of urban planning and lack of strategic thought among policy makers and planners in the country.

Cutting private deals with a section of individuals who control cartels does not take away the strategic risk exposures the economy faces from relying on an ungovernable privately controlled public transport system. Former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s attempts to introduce a variant of the Nyayo Bus in the form of National Youth Bus Services in response to similar public crisis over cost of public transport suffered the same fate.

It must worry those in power that as the crisis took a toll on the economy and households, parallel information were trending on social media of the luxuries jet hired by President William Ruto for official trip(s) to Asia. It is worth noting that despite muted publicity over the State visit to Astana by State House, it did not stop savvy Kenyans from tracking flight data to confirm if such a flight flew in and out around the time of his travel. Even jetting into the country and quietly slipping out to Mombasa for political events and publicly ignoring the evolving crisis does not sound random.

Unfortunately for the President, any private deal with a section of the officials in the matatu industry will not appease the publics or take away public anger towards his government’s handling of the crisis. Even if well intended, any negotiations with leaders of transport associations have already been delegitimised by suspicions over brown envelops exchanging hands at the expense of public good.

Weighty questions are already being asked on who funded the travel of the matatu association officials for the State House meeting in Mombasa. Furthermore, how can the public expect a level playing ground from negotiators who take coupons from opponents, even if it is to facilitate their transport? It is against the doctrines of fair negotiations to take anything from your opposing camp either before and after negotiations.

There are very few options left to the government to find a sustainable solution to the evolving crisis. For starts, it is obvious even to Kenyans that cash subsidies to cushion them from pump prices is not a viable option because they already understand the predicament the government is in with multilateral agencies and prevailing debt levels. Personally, I am not convinced that folks are opposed to the pump price increases per se.

After all, we are among the most digitally savvy societies in the world. This column did global price comparatives not long ago to demonstrate pump price elevations across many economies due to the conflict in the Middle East. What is unpalatable to the publics are the contradictions of wanton official extravagance and unending politicking fueled by their taxes, instead of a structured and strategic response to mitigate, not offset, the impact of the externally driven shocks to their pockets.

This column makes three proposals that can help appease public anger over the crisis. One is to make the so called G to G deal public as to its structure and beneficial owners. It is an open secret that there is more than the publics have being told over the agreement. The crisis has exclusively exposed that there is nothing government, at least on the Kenyan side.

Making the agreement public would bring to an end conspiracy theories as to who are the true dealers and their beneficial interests. Reasonable profit margins to the private dealers involved is an easier risk to manage than the conspiracy theories around it.

Two, the President needs to establish a publicly open multi-stakeholder technical taskforce to evaluate cost-effective pathways towards establishing 9 to 18 months strategic reserves for the country, devoid of wheeler dealers.

Countries that have had such reserves have been able to navigate the global crisis much smoothly than us who operate on a ship by ship model. How can a purported middle income economy and the largest in the region operate like that?

Finally, it is time policy makers and planners championed long term substitutes outside petroleum dependencies.

After all, our land is ably endowed with green energy sources that can significantly substitute demand for gasoline.

All we need is a more patriotic, public interest driven leadership at the top. It cost nothing to achieve such a leadership, just a reform of our wicked hearts that prioritises private greed over public interest!