Ababu links top civil servants to PAC wrangles

What you need to know:

The PAC chairman Ababu Namwamba blamed his woes on the sensitive investigations involving confidential expenditure at the Office of the President amounting to Sh2.8 billion and the Judiciary spending of Sh2 billion.

Embattled Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman Ababu Namwamba on Thursday testified in public over bribery allegations facing members of the watchdog and blamed top civil servants for his woes.

The Powers and Privileges Committee yielded to Mr Namwamba’s demands to hold the inquiry into bribery claims in public.

PAC has been dogged with infighting over the fate of several of its investigative reports with claims of corruption and extortion to alter or misplace key documents.

The Budalang’i MP blamed his woes on the sensitive investigations involving confidential expenditure at the Office of the President amounting to Sh2.8 billion and the Judiciary spending of Sh2 billion.

“I want to tell this committee... that my life is not entirely safe having dealt with powerful forces in the Office of the President, the IEBC (Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission), the Judiciary and (elsewhere in relation to) the hustler jet scandal,” he told the committee chaired by Kuresoi North MP Moses Cheboi.

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Ten MPs later addressed the Press and called on security agencies to beef up the PAC chairman’s security.

Mr Namwamba handed over a tape recording involving a conversation between former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Suna East MP Junet Mohammed and Nakuru Town West MP Samuel Arama discussing bribes allegedly paid by officials at the Office of the President to change PAC recommendations on the Sh2.8 billion confidential expenditure by security agencies.