'I will start by cutting government's size,' Matiang'i says on his presidential plan

According to Matiang'i, administrations become victims of poor governance due to the unaddressed proliferation of public funds that has long dogged Kenya.

He faulted the President William Ruto-led administration for wasting resources, noting that it has overwhelmingly spent money on illogical payments.

"The kind of country we have right now, I don't understand the size of government we have. It is a drain on government resources. Sometimes, poor prioritization of government programmes is a way you cut waste," he told NTV on Wednesday.

"Governments are very wasteful. Even when I was in government, there were things I saw that I could say we could do without. Every administration manages it differently. This one has taken it to a whole new level. If you have a trackload of advisors and all manner of people, all the overheads we incur are essentially wastage."

Matiang'i further argued that the wastage has affected critical sectors that aid in national growth, among them Education.

He said that when he manned the Education docket, the creation of the National Education Management Information System (NEMIS) would help to significantly streamline education, but it was obliterated when the new administration scrapped it and introduced the Kenya Education Management Information System (KEMIS).

NEMIS was a web-based data management solution which collected data and information from educational institutions and also tracked the performance and mobility of learners and teaching staff to ensure the effective utilisation of educational resources.

The Ministry of Education introduced KEMIS in June 2025, noting that it would help solve the error-prone NEMIS despite them undertaking the same role of data collection and verification.

"When this was interfered with, it means you don't have accurate data of the learners and people you are supposed to spend resources on and my suspicion is someone wanted to issue a new tender and make money because the way the system was worked on all that could have been done was to improve it not to do away with it because all resources that were spent on it were wasted," Matiang'i said.

NEMIS was launched in 2017 with a multi-million dollar grant from World Bank, as Matiang'i disclosed, but the total amount utilised remains unclear due to financial inconsistencies and a lack of proper auditing.

The system was dogged with flaws as it was later revealed that an estimated Ksh.1.3 billion was wasted through fraud and ghost schools.