The Turkwel dam project was cooked up in the smoke-filled kitchen of the Kerio Valley Development Authority (KVDA), like the Arror and Kimwarer “fictitious” damsa.
Like Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich, the then Energy Minister Nicholas Biwott hailed from the Kerio Valley. Like the present dams “project”, Turkwel was a series of scandals.
There was no due diligence done, no environmental assessment, and no open tendering.
When the head of European Union delegation to Kenya Achim Kratz fired a protest note on the scandalous manner in which the contract was awarded to a French company, the Kenyan government demanded his transfer from Nairobi.
The media was not allowed anywhere near the project site. When Washington Post Nairobi Bureau chief Blaine Hardy sneaked to Turkana to snoop around, District Commissioner Wilson Chepkwony, on orders from State House, gave him 30 minutes to leave Turkana.
And when the Financial Times of London wrote on the heist, copies of the paper were confiscated at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and destroyed.
The week Mr Biwott and his protégé, Finance minister George Saitoti, signed the contract with hand-picked French contractors in January 1986, Mr Kratz dispatched a lengthy protest note to the union’s head office in Brussels.
The contract price was more than three times the amount Kenya would have paid for an international competitive tender.
Unlike previous multipurpose dam projects, which were financed largely through grants or highly concessional loans, Turkwel was financed using commercial loans, a very convenient, purpose-built vehicle for kickbacks and blackmail in event of default by the host country.