Muturi questions Ruto's development priorities

Former AG Justin Muturi during an interview at The Standard Group. [File, Standard]

Former Attorney General Justin Muturi has said that Kenya’s governance challenges stem from poor sequencing and misplaced priorities, warning against what he described as the Government’s growing “preoccupation with grandiosity”.

According to Muturi, development is not defined by what looks modern, but by what makes a society productive.

“Nothing captures the absurdity of our priorities more clearly than borrowing billions to build stadiums in a country where doctors are on strike, farmers lack fertiliser, and millions still do not have reliable food, water or electricity,” he said in a statement. “A stadium is not a bad thing. It becomes a bad thing when it is built in a country that has not yet built the basics.”

He argued that the primary concern of any serious government should be the production of cheap, reliable electricity, which is the heartbeat of industrialisation. Without it, factories cannot operate, cold chains collapse, and small businesses suffocate under high power bills.

Muturi said Kenya should be investing heavily in power generation, transmission and grid stability so that manufacturing becomes cheaper than importing finished goods.

“Taking a Sh40 billion loan to build a stadium in Kenya today is like borrowing to buy a 95-inch QLED television while living in a leaking mud house in Mukuru kwa Njenga,” he said. “It looks impressive to visitors. But it does not keep the rain out, it does not feed the children, and it does not give the family a future.”

The former Speaker of the National Assembly also said that food security should follow energy as a national priority, arguing that hunger is not merely a humanitarian issue but an economic disaster.

“A hungry population cannot work, learn, innovate or remain politically stable,” he said. “Northern Kenya — from Garissa to Tana River to Turkana — turns green after just two weeks of rain. With irrigation, water piping and mechanised farming, these regions could become food baskets. Israel grows food in the desert.”

He added: “Egypt feeds itself along a narrow river. Kenya, with its land and climate, should never be importing maize while borrowing money to build sports arenas. Food security is cheaper, more productive and more stabilising than any stadium ever built.”

Another critical issue he raised was fuel, noting that transport costs ripple through every sector of the economy. Yet instead of aggressively pursuing energy independence through renewables, refineries and regional pipelines, Muturi said the government has quietly accepted high pump prices.

He also singled out healthcare, describing the spectacle of doctors on strike while stadium contracts are signed as not merely bad optics but a moral failure. “A country that cannot pay its doctors but can pay contractors to pour concrete has lost its compass,” he said. “Health is not consumption; it is investment. Every shilling spent keeping people alive, productive and mentally well returns many times over.”

On fertiliser, Muturi noted that Kenya imports what it could manufacture locally, despite having gas reserves, phosphate potential and a vast agricultural sector. Local fertiliser production, he argued, would lower food prices, boost yields, create jobs and conserve foreign exchange.

He also lamented how education is being treated as an afterthought, warning that rising school fees and reduced capitation amount to mortgaging the country’s future. “An educated child becomes a skilled worker, an entrepreneur and a taxpayer,” he said. “Education is the only form of public spending that compounds over time. Yet instead of expanding free, high-quality education and building research institutions, we are building arenas for 40,000 people to watch a game.”

Similarly, he described research and innovation as Kenya’s missing middle. Universities, he said, should be engines of technology, agriculture, medicine and manufacturing. Instead, Kenya imports ideas, medicine and machinery, and exports patients to India. “He added: “You grow the food before you host the party. You train doctors before you buy hospital furniture. You educate children before you give them trophies. Until we understand this, we will keep mistaking concrete for progress, and debt for development.”