Omtatah reveals plan to tackle public debt if elected president
By Cy Muganda, August 5, 2025Busia Senator Okiya Omtatah has outlined an unorthodox strategy to address Kenya’s ballooning public debt, promising to go after individuals who signed off on questionable loans and track down stolen funds if elected president.
Speaking during a local media interview on August 5, 2025, Omtatah claimed that much of Kenya’s borrowed money was fraudulently diverted and stashed abroad, presenting what he describes as an opportunity to challenge the debt burden.
“The beautiful thing about the Kenyan debt is that a lot of this money was borrowed and stashed abroad. It’s a question of tracking this money,” he stated.
Debt repayment strategy
The Senator explained that his proposed approach involves bringing together all parties involved in questionable debt transactions.
If given the chance, he said he would initiate negotiations with lenders to establish the legitimacy of certain loans and expose instances where public borrowing violated national interest.
“So all we will do is to get these people around the table and ask them to tell us where this money is,” he explained.
“We’ll sit across the table with the lenders, and we shall also follow the fellows who misappropriated the money, the regime owners, and have them see how we are going to pay this debt,” he added.
He expressed confidence in identifying those responsible for irregular borrowing, saying the perpetrators are well-known.
“The individuals who borrowed the money, we know them. The people who signed on these things, we know them,” he remarked.
Asset recovery
According to Omtatah, some debt agreements violated Kenya’s public policy, providing grounds for renegotiation.
“We have got a way that we can demonstrate that it was against the public policy of the Republic of Kenya to incur debt in the manner it was done,” he commented.
Omtatah proposed bold measures to recover funds before placing the burden on taxpayers, including seizing assets from those he accuses of benefiting from irregular borrowing.
“If we have to take money from the Kenyan taxpayer, then the first thing we have to do is to auction these people in power who were borrowing these funny debts. Some of them are richer than this country. We shall auction them and also track where they have stashed the money,” he asserted.