President William Ruto on Tuesday, December 3, 2024, hit out at critics of the Adani airport deal, remarking that the vast majority of them have yet to step into an airport for whatever reason.
In a charged statement in Manga, Taita Taveta County, Ruto criticized his administration’s detractors, indicating that they were quick to criticize yet they had no alternative strategies.
“When you stop the building of an airport in your country na huna mpango mbadala, you have no ideas on how to build any airport and no clue on how it is going to be built. Wale wanapinga airport hata hawajawahi kukanyaga kwa airport hata siku moja,” Ruto said.
Adding: “Lakini mimi nataka niwahakikishie kuwa airport mpya tutajenga. We are going to build a new airport in Kenya. We may have stopped Adani from doing it. I was confident that he was going to build our airport and that he was going to do a good job.”
New airport
Ruto revealed that he believed that Adani was capable of getting the job done but the law that proscribes proceeding with contractors who have pending court cases led to the termination of the deal.
“But because of the law that bars us from engaging with people who have cases, we stopped it but that does not mean we are not going to build the airport. We are going to build the airport. We are going to get a new framework; we are going to get people who believe in this country to build a new airport for us because that is how the future is going to look like,” he stated.
During his State of the Nation address in the National Assembly on November 21, 2024, Ruto announced the cancellation of Adani deals in the expansion of the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) and the energy transmission deal with KETRACO.
“Accordingly, I now direct in furtherance of the principles enshrined in article 10 of the constitution on transparency and accountability and based on new information provided by investigative agencies and partner nations that the procuring agencies within the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum immediately cancel the ongoing procurement process for the JKIA expansion public-private partnership,” Ruto said.
The head of state has now challenged critics of his projects to offer alternative ways of getting things done, decrying the culture of criticizing everything.
“The people who don’t believe in this country; the people who sabotage our country and the people who do not want to invest anything in Kenya, we glorify them as if they were anything. Ati wale wamefanya ujenzi wa airport kusimamishwa ni mashujaa. Mashujaa wamefanya kitu gani,” Ruto quipped.
