Senator Omtatah Withdraws Petition Against Uhuru, Ruto Over Kenya's Public Debt

Senator Omtatah Withdraws Petition Against Uhuru, Ruto Over Kenya’s Public Debt

On Thursday, April 24, Busia Senator Okiya Omtatah announced the withdrawal of petition 531 of 2015, which addressed Kenya’s odious debt crisis.

The suit, which has been in the courts for nearly a decade, listed President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta and then-Deputy President William Ruto as the first and second respondents, respectively.

During a news briefing, the loud activist revealed the new development, blaming too much time being lost on technicalities, but emphasized that the war was not done.

We have decided to withdraw the petition 531 of 2015 that we had filed in 2015. It is a tactical retreat but we remain firm that Kenya has no debt!
We are moving to file the petition again.
We must not live in fear of the storm; we must become the storm.

Aluta Continua ✊🏽 pic.twitter.com/RlEKO9VhBz
— Okiya Omtatah Okoiti (@OkiyaOmtatah) April 24, 2025

“After consultations and given the technical objections raised by the court, it has become untenable to proceed with this petition in the manner that it was,” Omtatah declared.

“So we have withdrawn it tactically to avoid the cascading disaster that was before us.”

“However, we are going to refile the same immediately so that we can avoid all those technicalities that were being placed in our way like minefields,” he added.

The petition, filed in 2015, claimed mismanagement and a lack of openness in the handling of the Eurobond revenues.

The petitioners claimed that the funds were improperly deposited in offshore accounts rather than the Consolidated Fund, in violation of constitutional principles and the Public Finance Management Act.

They requested responsibility and transparency in the use of Eurobond funds.

The latest follows Omtatah’s recent remark that Kenya has no national debt.

Omtatah claimed that the trillions of dollars borrowed by former President Uhuru Kenyatta and his successor, William Ruto, were entirely their responsibility.

According to Omtatah, the unlawful modification to the Public Finance Management (PFM) Act in 2014 caused the country’s economic coffers to spiral out of control.

READ MORE:

The Senator stated that the change, which bypassed Senate involvement in violation of Article 110 of the Constitution, granted Treasury officials unrestricted power to open overseas accounts and arrange loans without public or parliamentary review.