Interior Principal Secretary Karanja Kibicho has distanced himself from the saga of Deputy President William Ruto aborted trip to Uganda.

Kibicho, who has been accused by Ruto’s allies of being behind the barring of the DP from travelling, explained that neither he nor Interior CS Fred Matiang’i knew what transpired.

“We at the Ministry of Interior had nothing to do with blocking of the Deputy President. It is fashionable for people to mention Kibicho.

These are people who want to seek sympathy from the public,” he said.

Speaking during a TV interview on Wednesday evening, Kibicho (pictured) said the DP must obtain clearance whenever he is traveling outside the country by virtue of being a civil servant.

Ruto relationship

“Whenever there is such a travel, common sense will tell me that you require certain level of clearance and certainly from the Head of State, I would imagine but I don’t have my facts right about the incident,” said Kibicho.

“By the time people who are supposed to clear are asking for information, it must have been lacking because those are seasoned civil servants,” he added.

Asked whether it was fair to block the DP, Kibicho said: “I don’t know. We all work in this system.

There are regulations, there are processes, I don’t know why it is difficult to get the requisite clearance.”

According to Kibicho his relationship with the DP is that of a boss and a junior.

“My direct boss is CS Matiang’i; the next is the Head of Public Service. I do not answer directly to the Deputy President. But whenever he has some task to give, and he gives, I do it.”

Kibicho said people get into problems because of minor issues and then blame the Ministry of Interior.

He explained that before a person holds a public meeting, there are regulations to be followed.

“There are regulations. We did not create them, we found them. You need to go to the nearest police station, inform the OCS so that they give you clearance. Why would you then have a problem with that?

“I have never called any police officer to give instructions to block any political side from carrying out their activities.

This ministry believes in commands. We have a command structure. If I want to communicate about an issue of security, I will not call an OCS.

Why would I call an OCS? I do not even know them by name. The structure demands that if I have any security concern, the person to tell is the Inspector General of Police that there is security concern in this area, look at it.”

Poll preparations

On elections, the PS said that they had established the Elections Operations Committee and picked various aspects that need to be looked into from the security perspective.

“We do a thermo map where there are hotspots with respect to security, hate speech and very many other things.

That map then guides our deployment. That preparation is ongoing so that by the time we are ready for the elections, we are also ready to counter any reaction that may tamper with the peace and security of this country,” he said.