Hussein Mohammed, the spokesperson for the Kenya State House, disclosed this on Wednesday, July amidst criticisms following reports of the pay rise for ministers and lawmakers.”

“The President has emphasised that now more than ever, the Executive and all arms of government must live within their means,” Mr Mohammed said, adding that Mr Ruto has instructed a review of salaries for his ministers and lawmakers.

It was reported on Tuesday, July 2, that Mr Ruto’s ministers and Kenyan members of parliament received a pay rise effective July 1.

According to local media, the pay rise for Mr Ruto’s cabinet members and lawmakers coincided with nationwide protests that have resulted in over 39 deaths and hundreds of injuries.

Previously, each cabinet secretary who earned Ksh. 957,000 will now earn Ksh. 990,000 plus allowances, and each of the 51 principal secretaries who earned Ksh. 792,519 will now earn Ksh. 819,844.

The salaries of the speakers of the National Assembly and Senate increased from Ksh. 1,185,327 to Ksh. 1,208,362, while salaries of members of parliament increased from Ksh. 725,502 to Ksh. 739,600.

Although deliberations on salary increments for Mr Ruto’s cabinet members and lawmakers occurred months ago, their implementation coincided with deadly protests against a tax hike.

However, Mr Ruto has now been forced to announce the suspension of the pay rise for his ministers and lawmakers for the time being.

The unprecedented scenes that left parts of parliament ablaze and gutted and injured scores of people on Tuesday have shocked Kenyans and prompted President William Ruto’s government to deploy the military.

The mainly youth-led rallies began mostly peacefully last week, with thousands of demonstrators marching in the capital Nairobi and across the country against the tax increases.

But tensions flared sharply on Tuesday afternoon, as police officers fired live rounds on crowds that later ransacked the parliament complex.

Hours later, Defence Minister Aden Bare Duale announced that the government had deployed the army to support the police in tackling “the security emergency” in the country.

“So far, we have at least 13 people killed, but this is not the final number,” Simon Kigondu, president of the Kenya Medical Association said, adding that he had never seen “such level of violence against unarmed people.”

“Deaths, mayhem”, read the front-page headline on the Standard newspaper, while the Daily Nation described the situation as “Pandemonium”, saying: “The foundations of the country have been shaken to the core.”

An official at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi said Wednesday that medics were treating “160 people… some of them with soft tissue injuries, some of them with bullet wounds”.

In a late-night press briefing, Ruto warned that his government would take a tough line against “violence and anarchy”, likening some of the demonstrators to “criminals”.

“It is not in order or even conceivable that criminals pretending to be peaceful protesters can reign terror against the people, their elected representatives and the institutions established under our constitution and expect to go scot-free,” he said.

The government has been taken by surprise by the intensity of opposition to its tax proposals –- mostly led by young, Gen-Z Kenyans — which culminated in the scenes at parliament that played out live on television.

Images shared on local TV stations after crowds broke through the barricades showed the building ransacked, with burnt furniture and smashed windows.

As police fired at the angry crowds, leaving several bodies strewn on the ground, protest organisers urged people to walk home together and “stay safe”.

A heavy police presence was deployed around parliament early on Wednesday, according to an AFP reporter, the smell of tear gas still in the air.

A policeman standing in front of the broken barricades to the complex told AFP he had watched the scenes unfold on TV.

“It was madness, we hope it will be calm today,” he said.

Earlier on Tuesday, the rallies in various Kenyan cities had been largely peaceful.

However, tensions escalated in Nairobi later in the day, with some protesters hurling stones at police, who deployed tear gas and water cannons before firing live bullets.

AFP journalists saw three people bleeding heavily and lying motionless on the ground near parliament.

The unrest has alarmed the international community, with the White House appealing for calm and more than 10 Western nations — including Canada, Germany and Britain — saying they were “especially shocked by the scenes witnessed outside the Kenyan Parliament”.

UN chief Antonio Guterres and the head of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, have also expressed deep concern.

Veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga, who heads the Azimio coalition, accused the government of unleashing “brute force on our country’s children”.

Rights watchdogs have also accused the authorities of abducting protesters.

The police have not responded to any AFP requests for comment.

– Cost of living –

Long-running grievances over the rising cost of living spiralled last week as lawmakers began debating proposed tax hikes in the 2024 finance bill.

The cash-strapped government says the increases are needed to service the country’s massive debt of some 10 trillion shillings ($78 billion), equal to roughly 70 per cent of Kenya’s GDP.

After rolling back some of the more controversial proposals — which would have affected bread purchases, car ownership, and financial and mobile services — the government now intends to increase fuel prices and export duties.

Kenya’s treasury has warned of a gaping budget shortfall of 200 billion shillings, following Ruto’s decision to roll back some of the tax hikes.

While Kenya is among East Africa’s most dynamic economies, a third of its 52 million population live in poverty.

“We are not going to stop at just Benin and Togo,” the Minister of Education, Tahir Mamman, said on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Wednesday.

“We are going to extend the dragnet to countries like Uganda, Kenya, even Niger here where such institutions have been set up,” he said.

An undercover journalist with Daily Nigeria newspaper had detailed how he acquired a degree from a university in Benin Republic under two months and in fact, deployed for the National Youth Service Corps.

The Federal Government had immediately suspended accreditation of certificates from the two francophone West African nations and launched a probe which the minister said should submit its report in three months.

Mamman said students who patronise such institutions were not victims but criminals.

“I have no sympathy for such people. Instead, they are part of the criminal chain that should be arrested,” the minister said on Wednesday.

He added that security agents would go after those with fake certificates from foreign countries already using them to secure opportunities in Nigeria.

On the issue of student loan, the minister said, “The President has given his word that it will be operational from this quarter and the committee is working very hard to ensure that the president’s word is implemented.

He was sworn in by the Chief Judge, Martha Koome, on Tuesday at a ceremony held in the packed Moi International Sports Centre in Kasarani.

Amid cheers from the excited crowd, Ruto swore an oath of allegiance and another oath for the execution of the functions of the office.

Hours before his inauguration, the outgoing president Uhuru Kenyatta congratulated Ruto on his victory in the August 9 poll.

Kenyans quoted Uhuru as saying, “As a hallmark of our democracy, therefore, I will, before God and my fellow countrymen, handover the instruments of power to our new president at the Moi International Sports Center Kasarani and with that, the fourth administration will come to an end and the tenure of the fifth administration will begin.”

“My family and I join all Kenyans in wishing the very best to our next President Dr. William Samoei Ruto and extending to him our warmest congratulations for receiving the mandate of Kenyans to lead us as our 5th president.”

The Vice President of Nigeria, Yemi Osinbajo, was also at the swearing-in ceremony.

Osinbajo’s media aide, Laolu Akande, made this known in a tweet which read, “VP Osinbajo now in Nairobi, Kenya where he is representing Nigeria at the inauguration of Dr. William Ruto as Kenya’s fifth President today.

On arrival, VP congratulates ‘the people of Kenya on this celebration of democracy,’ and added, ‘God bless the Republic of Kenya’.”

Ruto also appended his signature to the corresponding documents, as seen in the live broadcast monitored by our correspondent on Tuesday.

With his inauguration, Ruto becomes the fifth president of Independent Kenya, and the second ethnic Kalenjin after the late Daniel Arap Moi to hold the office.

The assailants opened fire on the 14-seater vehicle after it ran over the explosive device about eight kilometres (five miles) from the town of Mandera.

“Six people were killed during an attack on a vehicle,” said national police spokesman Bruno Shioso. A security operation is underway to get the attackers.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the assault.

A police report said a General Service Unit patrol team, which was on foot and nearby, engaged the attackers, who fled towards the Somali border.

The assailants used guns and rocket-propelled grenades during the assault, it added.

The minibus, which was completely mangled in the attack, was carrying an unknown number of passengers.

Shioso told AFP seven people had survived but had “various degrees of injuries”.

The Mandera region is prone to raids over its long and porous land border with Somalia, where the Al-Shabaab Islamist militant group controls swathes of countryside.

Other regions bordering Somalia are also susceptible to attacks and Kenyan officials are often quick to blame the militants for assaults on its soil.

The pro-Biafra activist’s brother, Kingsley Kanunta, sued on his behalf, according to court papers obtained by our correspondent

In his petition presented by Luchiri and Company Advocates, Kanu argued that his arrest in Kenya and subsequent extradition to Nigeria in June were unconstitutional.

Those named as respondents are Kenya’s Interior CS, Director of Immigration, Director of Criminal Investigations, OCPD Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, and the Attorney General.

Nigerian officials on June 29 claimed Kanu was brought back to face trial after he jumped bail and went on the run in 2017.

The petition revealed that Kanu was in Kenya to seek medical attention for a heart challenge and for “Indigenous People of Biafra-related work”.

It further revealed that the agitator arrived at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in May from Kigali, Rwanda, on an East African tourist visa.

It further said that Kanu went to the airport on June 19 to pick someone but never returned to his residence, Purple Haze Apartments on Kitale Lane.

“The subject is believed to have been apprehended at the airport on June 19, 2021, and unlawfully detained for several days after which he was illegally and stealthily extradited to Nigeria without his British passport in utter-non-compliance with laid down processes of laws in Kenya,” the petition added.

While faulting Kanu’s extradition to Nigeria, the petition said, “The subject (Kanu) is a British citizen resident in the United Kingdom.

“He formerly held Nigerian citizenship but renounced it in 2015. Consequently, his Nigerian passport was taken away from him by Nigerian authorities.”

It argued that Kanu’s extradition from Nairobi to Abuja in June violated the Extradition (Contiguous and Foreign Countries) Act Chapter 76 of the laws of Kenya.

Kanu, in the petition, asked the court to declare his extradition “a violation of the fundamental rights and freedoms to equal protection of the law, human dignity, freedom and security, freedom of movement, fair administrative action, access to justice, the right to be represented in court and a fair hearing as guaranteed in the Constitution of Kenya”.

He also sought an order for “exemplary and punitive damages” against the respondents “on account of their gross violation of the subject’s fundamental freedoms and rights as enumerated in the petition”.

He further requested a declaration that “detaining the subject without justification and without informing him of the reasons for the detention, holding him incommunicado in deplorable and inhumane conditions” was a violation of rights protected by the Constitution.

The court was also asked, “to issue an order compelling the respondents to furnish him with the designations and ranks of state officers, public officers, police officers, agencies and departments, institutions and organs of government involved in his extradition.”

The Nigerians identified as Morah Stanley Apple, Boniface Nnamdi Nkachukwulu and Godwin Ovoepeke were arrested on Sunday, January 3, 2021, by detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) at Courtyard Apartments within Ruaka township, where the girl was last seen.

DCI, in a statement, said the missing teenager was seen visiting the said apartment and also in the company of the three men on diverse dates during the festive period.

“The minor’s distraught parents have been looking for their daughter in vain, only to realize that she had on various occasions been lured to the apartment where the three men reside,” the DCI said in a statement. Neighbours also reported having seen the minor in the company of the Nigerian men.

The announcement was made during a recent press conference where the association’s Secretary-General Ben Liyai revealed that they had already spoken to its members over the issue as he argued that businesses had stopped and the economy was depreciating because of the Coronavirus outbreak.

He said ‘‘LATAK directs all tenants not to pay rent until when President Uhuru Kenyatta orders businesses to resume normal operations. ll the landlords must forthwith stop evictions, harassment and disconnection of electricity and water to tenants,’’

Speaking on behalf of other inmates, Sofia Swaleh who is serving a life sentence said the time allocated to their visiting spouses and relatives is brief and does not allow for sexual intimacy.

She said “The Government, through the leadership of Kenyan prisons, should introduce a law that allows women serving lengthy jail terms enjoy sexual intimacy with their visiting husbands.”

It was further gathered that the quest to have conjugal visits introduced in the country’s lawful detention centres struck a dead end in 2014, when the Government ruled out the possibility of entertaining the suggestion on grounds of not being ready for it.

Nigeria, Algeria, Angola, Ivory Coast, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia were identified as African nations with direct links or a high volume of travel to China.

The statement read “WHO has identified 13 top priority countries (Algeria, Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia) which either have direct links or a high volume of travel to China. To ensure rapid detection of the novel coronavirus, it is important to have laboratories which can test samples and WHO is supporting countries to improve their testing capacity. Since this is a new virus, there are currently only two referral laboratories in the African region which have the reagents needed to conduct such tests. However, reagent kits are being shipped to more than 20 other countries in the region, so diagnostic capacity is expected to increase over the coming days. Active screening at airports has been established in a majority of these countries and while they will be WHO first areas of focus, the organization will support all countries in the region in their preparation efforts. It is critical that countries step up their readiness and in particular put in place effective screening mechanisms at airports and other major points of entry to ensure that the first cases are detected quickly”.