Ndindi Nyoro says history will judge Parliament over Safaricom share sale
By Cy Muganda, January 20, 2026Kiharu Member of Parliament Ndindi Nyoro has warned that history will not judge Parliament kindly if it proceeds with the current terms of the government’s sale of its stake in Safaricom.
Speaking on Tuesday, January 20, 2026, Nyoro raised concerns about the transaction process, questioning the pricing mechanism and the lack of competitive bidding in what he described as a significant national asset sale.
“Take a bank with 100 billion shillings in shareholders’ funds or co-capital. If you buy the share today in the market, it is trading at 32% of that value. Would you go to the bank to tell them to sell you the share in the market price? Would they agree? It has never happened in the market and elsewhere,” Nyoro stated.
International precedents
The MP drew comparisons with global markets, arguing that the current terms of the sale undervalues strategic assets and ignores how major transactions are handled in more developed markets.
Nyoro cited ongoing corporate transactions in the United States to support his argument for competitive bidding.
“Currently in the US, there is an ongoing bid of a company called Warner Brothers Discovery, the owner of CNN. But they are not selling in the market. There is a bid and the final bid is two companies, one called Paramount and Netflix,” he said.
The Kiharu MP challenged the notion that market pricing was the appropriate mechanism for such a strategic sale, saying Kenya was being forced into accepting terms that disadvantage the public.
“Then this jargon about the market, a sophisticated market like the US, is seeing the value of incompetitive bidding in a private company. But here in Kenya, we have been cornered by our buyers, and we are now talking the language of market price. It will be wrong, and history will not judge us very well if we continue this transaction with this kind of consideration,” he stated.
Questions over buyer selection
Nyoro questioned the process used to identify the buyer for the government’s stake, emphasising that the shares belong to all Kenyans.
“Chair, 6 billion shillings we are selling with our population, it means the government is selling my 100 shillings as a share. If you divide the shares we are selling, Chair, and you give Kenyans their share, everyone in this hall, because we are all Kenyans, today will be allocated 100 shares,” he said.
The MP demanded transparency in the buyer selection process.
“So my 100 shares, what is the process that has been taken for the buyer to be identified? What was the process? How did you one day wake up and decide we are going to sell to the current buyer?” he asked.
Asymmetry concerns
Nyoro further raised concerns about information asymmetry, noting that the prospective buyer already has insider access to Safaricom, including representation at the board level.
“There is something in the market for any transaction to work, for any information, for any transaction to work efficiently, Chair. There is something called information symmetry. Now, we are selling our stake of 15 per cent to a company who is already inside Safaricom, who are already having board members,” he stated.
“So definitely, they already have a step ahead of any other person who would think of buying our stake because of the information asymmetry. That is something else that we have to look at,” he added.