By Staff Reporter | Wajir Today| Wednesday 21 January 2026
Wajir Governor Ahmed Abdullahi has launched a fierce rebuttal to former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua following remarks accusing leaders from Kenya’s North Eastern region of corruption and mismanagement, saying such claims ignore decades of neglect and the daily realities facing residents.
Speaking in Wajir on Wednesday, the governor rejected suggestions that underdevelopment in the region is the result of poor leadership, describing the criticism as unfair and detached from conditions on the ground.
“Calling us all manner of names and saying our territory is underdeveloped as a result of our inability to manage,” Abdullahi said, before turning his fire directly on Gachagua. “If you are fired as a government officer selling relief maize, you don’t have the moral authority to talk to me about corruption”
Abdullahi argued that comparing Wajir to smaller, better-connected counties misses the point.
“The developmental gap between this region and the rest of the country cannot be attributed to CDF expenditure or equitable share money,” he said. “Fact of the matter is we have done more with devolved funds than the average county in Kenya.”
He pointed to infrastructure projects funded through devolved resources, asking: “How many counties in Kenya have constructed standard tarmac roads of over 50 kilometres from equitable share? How many have built medical training colleges?”
But the governor acknowledged that progress is slow because the county started from “a very low base” and faces challenges unique to the region, including its size and climate. Wajir South constituency alone covers 22,000 square kilometres, an area he said is “81 times the size of Kiharu constituency,” while Wajir County is “the size of over 20 counties combined.”
Much of the county budget, he said, goes towards emergency interventions rather than long-term projects. “We’re spending money here supplementing relief food from national government to buy food for people in Ramadan,” Abdullahi said. “We’re trucking water to people deep in the reserves to help them go through the drought.”
In a remark that drew mixed reactions locally, he added: “We don’t need to pave schools… Our sand is fine. All we need is the classrooms.”
The governor dismissed Gachagua’s comments as politically motivated, linking them to North Eastern leaders’ support for the current administration.
“The bitterness is emanating from the fact that as a region, we have made a conscious decision to support the current government,” he said, adding that the region backs President William Ruto’s re-election in 2027.
The governor’s scathing response forms part of a wider online and offline debate in which political leaders from Kenya’s northern region have been accused of corruption, mismanagement and bearing responsibility for the region’s persistent underdevelopment.
