One of Kenya’s forgotten scandals, the 45-year-old Halal abattoir in Ngong, has resurfaced, and the taxpayer will, once again, shoulder the Sh5.7 billion burden of the private meat venture that went terribly wrong in the 1970s.
It has emerged from court proceedings that the National Treasury could be planning to pay out the cash for the botched project that has become a case study of all that could possibly go wrong with public-private partnerships.
In this case, the government provided land for the project and a loan towards its development, but has now been slapped with the massive bill.
At the High Court in Nairobi, tycoon Mohammed Ali Motha is fighting Mr Ramadhan Juma Ali, a man claiming to be his son, and who insists on getting a slice of the anticipated Sh5.7 billion payout from the government.
The pair has every reason to be confident about the payout after Livestock Principal Secretary Harry Kimtai told a court in December last year that the payment had been approved.
Halal Meat Products had asked the High Court to jail Mr Kimtai, arguing that he had stalled the release of their award. Replying, Mr Kimtai blamed the Treasury for delaying release of the funds, saying, the Agriculture and Livestock ministry had already approved the release of the funds to Halal.
It is a story of twists and turns, exposing government lethargy, bureaucracy, ineptitude and high-handedness.
The saga is traceable back to the meat shortage of 1972 in Nairobi, when the Agriculture ministry allowed the construction of privately-owned slaughterhouses in several towns across the country to compete with the Kenya Meat Commission. Within no time, there was an influx of meat, which raised new concerns over its fitness for consumption.