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{
    "id": 1408973,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1408973/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 101,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Ugunja, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Opiyo Wandayi",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "management of the company to participate in a press conference at the premises of the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) and take responsibility over something that the Cabinet Secretary is directly culpable. I wish Hon. Members would listen to me. I am saying that matters of food production and food security directly touch on national security. In some countries, you would be summarily executed in public any moment there is evidence of tampering with food production by way of supplying substandard or fake farm inputs including fertiliser. In those countries, you would be summarily executed in public if suspected of having been involved in jeopardising the food security of the country or nation. We are lucky to have a functioning Constitution and being governed by the rule of law. This is not a small or light matter of politics. This is not about Kenya Kwanza or Azimio. It cannot be. This is also not about Hon. Jack Wamboka. It is about the survival of this country. History has recorded that countries that are not food-efficient have been prone to coups, counter-coups and civil upheavals. Anybody attempting to jeopardise food production is inviting us as a country to go that direction. A hungry country or populace is very dangerous. You cannot govern it. You cannot govern a hungry population. They can rise up against you anytime and overthrow you. The Cabinet Secretary and his accomplices are directly responsible for attempting to subvert food production in this country. Can you tell me that the Cabinet Secretary does not get involved in the procurement by NCPB? You can tell that to the birds. Everybody who lives in this country knows how government works. NCPB is a government entity. It is a parastatal within the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development, under the supervision of its Cabinet Secretary. How on earth did NCPB procure hundreds of thousands of bags of NPK fertiliser from a briefcase company going by the name Mems Distributors Limited, a company that has had no history of dealing with fertiliser? Mems Distributors went ahead and approached KELS Chemicals Limited to manufacture for it the fertiliser for it to supply to NCPB. What happens? KELS Chemicals Limited manufactures and supplies to Mems Distributors only 69,000 bags of NPK fertiliser 10-16-10. But then, what happens again? Mems Distributors proceeds to supply NCPB with over 400,000 bags. The question is: Where did Mems Distributors and NCPB get the extra hundreds of thousands of bags of this fertiliser? And then it turns out that these extra bags of fertiliser are the ones that were stones, gravel, sand and donkey waste, I am told. Somebody is basically sabotaging the very survival of this country. The Cabinet Secretary cannot feign ignorance because if he does, then he is not fit to hold that office. He is unfit. He is incompetent. Then NCPB goes ahead and pays for this fake fertiliser. I may call it air, because farmers will never use it anyway. It basically tells you that somebody powerful was pulling the strings behind the scenes. That is the point. Somebody even more powerful was pulling the strings behind the scenes. The Cabinet Secretary cannot absolve himself from accountability on this matter. Even more intriguing, as investigations are being conducted by the relevant investigative agencies, we are being told by my friend the Chairman of the Departmental Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs and Hon. Owen Baya that the Departmental Committee on Agriculture and Livestock is seized of the matter and that we should wait for the outcome of their investigations. And yet NCPB goes ahead to decree that it is embarking on a scheme to compensate farmers who purchased the fake fertiliser. Then you ask yourself: Where are they getting the money from? This House, to the best of my recollection, did not authorise any such expenditure. Where did NCPB get the authority and the money to compensate farmers yet the investigations are not complete. Do we even know how much this fake fertiliser was, as we speak? We do not know."
}