Former State House senior adviser and ex-Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria sparked a political firestorm with explosive claims that Members of Parliament (MPs) were bribed to engineer the removal of Aden Duale as Majority Leader during the 12th Parliament.
Speaking in an interview on Citizen TV, Kuria alleged that legislators received Ksh100,000 each from the Uhuru Kenyatta regime to replace Duale with Amos Kimunya. He insisted the incident was not hearsay but officially documented in the Hansard, the National Assembly’s record of proceedings.
“In the 12th Parliament, we were given some money by the Uhuru Kenyatta regime to remove Aden Duale as the Majority Leader. It is on Hansard that I waved the money I was given. You cannot say it doesn’t happen, it has always happened,” Kuria stated.
Kuria recounted that he personally carried the cash into Parliament and even offered to return it on the floor of the House, ensuring the bribery incident was entered into the official record. According to him, the disbursements were allegedly coordinated through the then-Majority Leader’s office after Duale was ousted in a Jubilee Parliamentary Group meeting chaired by Kenyatta at KICC.
Duale’s removal came at a time when he had shifted allegiance to then-Deputy President William Ruto, a move that made him politically untenable within Kenyatta’s camp. His replacement by Kimunya, Kuria claims, was not driven by principle but by outright financial inducements.
The revelations come just days after President William Ruto condemned what he termed “extortion in Parliament,” warning that MPs soliciting bribes for legislative favors would face arrest and prosecution. In response, lawmakers suspended committee sittings in protest, intensifying an already tense standoff between the executive and legislature.
Kuria, however, insisted that bribery in Parliament is not an anomaly but part of Kenya’s entrenched political culture. “Some people will hide behind lobbying, others will call it facilitation, but the truth is that bribery in Parliament is not a rumor. It has always happened,” he said.
The allegations cast a long shadow on Uhuru Kenyatta’s legacy, raising questions about the misuse of state resources to manipulate parliamentary loyalty. They also strengthen Ruto’s narrative that corruption remains a cancer undermining governance.
If MPs can be bought off with just Ksh100,000 to topple a Majority Leader, then billion-shilling budgets and national policies are nothing but commodities for sale.
Kuria’s confession is not just an admission, it’s an indictment: Kenya’s democracy is up for auction to the highest bidder.
