JUSTIN MUTURI: RUTO FIRED ME OVER MY STAND ON EXTRA JUDICIAL KILLINGS

The President in a televised interview on the night of 31st March 2025 at Sagana State lodge stated that I was relieved of my duties for failing to attend cabinet meetings. I would wish to respond as follows: It will be recalled that on the 12th of January this year I issued a press statement in which I condemned the rampant abductions and extra judicial killings that had been going in the county.

In that statement I called upon government to rise to the occasion and release all those who were held in captivity and bring to book the perpetrators. Subsequent to this I was challenged by the DCI to go and record a statement with the DCIO Killimani because the matter was allegedly under active investigation. There have been three cabinet meetings this year, to date, the first being on 21st of January at Kakamega State Lodge.

When I received the invitation and the agenda for the cabinet meeting I realized that there was no agenda touching on abductions and extra judicial killings, yet even the President had on 27th December 2025 at a public rally in Homa Bay committed to ending abductions. I, therefore, felt in good conscience that it would not be fitting for me to attend a cabinet meeting that did not address such a monumental issue that goes to the core of our constitutional basis and the rule of law.

In the circumstances, I decided to write to the President through the Secretary to the Cabinet, drawing his attention to these issues and requesting him to excuse my non-attendance for those reasons. The information I have from the Secretary to the Cabinet is that she delivered my letter dated 20th January 2025 to him.

The next Cabinet meeting was a special one called on 11th February, 2025 and I received both the invitation and agenda of the meeting. Like in the first instance, I went through the agenda and found that the issues of abductions and extra judicial killings were not listed.

I wrote to the President directly, this time, drawing his attention to my earlier letter of 20th January, 2025, and stated that I found it untenable for the highest decision making body of the state to continue sweeping the matter of abductions and extra judicial killings under the carpet.

I stated that I would not attend any other cabinet meetings until the issues of abductions and extra judicial killings were listed as an agenda for discussion, debate and resolution on the way forward. The third cabinet meeting took place on the 11th of March at State House Nairobi and like the other two I had been invited and sent the agenda for the day. The item was still not on the agenda.

I wrote directly to the President on the 10th March 2025 again referring to the previous two letters and reiterating my position and I did beseech the President to direct that the vexing issue of abduction and extra judicial killings in our country be prioritized and placed on the agenda for future cabinet meetings.

To date the President has never responded to any of my letters, clearly thereby indicating that the matter of abduction and extra judicial killings is not worthy of his attention or that of the cabinet. After each cabinet meeting I regularly received, without failure, the dispatch from cabinet indicating all the matters that had been discussed and the decisions thereof but the matter of abductions and extra judicial killings has never been discussed.

I was, therefore, surprised to hear the President on live television stating that the issue has been discussed in cabinet and has been resolved. There is no doubt that I was sacked because of my stand on the abductions and extra judicial killings and not because of the so-called absconding of cabinet meetings.