August 2015, NYAMIRA county assembly endorsed a project called ‘Bob Ni Swag’ which was to act as a youth savings initiative. The County Youth executive Peter Omwansa Ogwara had told the County assembly that by May 2014, 30000 young people had registered and made savings towards the initiative.
What Mr. Omwansa didn't tell the MCA's and members of public is that the county government had already poured a whooping Ksh's 24million to support the initiative. This money was meant for mobilizing resources and create public awareness on the project to encourage more residents go support and participate.
The goal of the project was to improve financial inclusion and well-being of low income youth in Nyamira County. The project was also to measure the uptake, savings outcomes, experiences and developmental impacts of Youth Savings Accounts (YSA’s) for long term financial security of the Youth as a stimulus for economic development and poverty eradication in Nyamira County. The youth were to make savings to the Bob ni Swag kitty by making deposits of as low as Ksh's 10, any time at their convenience hence allow a build up of savings over time. In the long run, the project was deemed to evolve into a SACCO hence allow members to borrow money to start small business enterprises hence become self reliant.
This couldn't last for even a month. Corruption deals, mismanagement of funds and looting started rolling out in the project. The youth who had already enrolled for the project lost confidence in the same and stopped taking part in the same. It didn't take long before the whole dream collapsed to invite questions of a possible deal of waste of public funds on something which wasn't to bring the desired outcomes. The 24 million which has already set aside for the project were never to be recovered. That's how the county was to lose the funds over shadow imaginations of a possible gold mine. Nobody has been held accountable for the same misappropriation of funds to date.
The county Governor Nyagarama has set the county on a shaky foundation. He is a supporter of corruption and has perfected the art of nepotism, corruption, thuggery and hooliganism that we fear raising such questions publicly. He is a master of deceit. A merchant of honey and other small things. A hawker. A village hunter chasing foxes as lions roam large. The amount of intimidation he has subjected his critics to has given him a free atmosphere to run the county as a barber shop. He drafts, approves and implements everything on his own. Raise questions and you will have to dance to the tune of physical torture and corporal suffering.