The saga at the Youth Fund continues at the board hit back at the Minister of Youth Affairs for ‘re-appointing’ the ‘previous CEO’ to his previous post. And the nightly news have duly shown two CEO’s show up at the Fund office, each claiming authority to run the Fund – one backed by the Board of Directors, one sacked by the Board (and reappointed by the Minister)
For month now the CEO has had the upper hand in the media making rounds that he had single handedly stopped the Fund from engaging in financing deal with Canadian group Enablis – one which would the Fund would have been better served by channeling these funds through local commercial banks
Now the board has hit back with a hard hitting statement giving reasons why they had fired the CEO including that he was in-subordinate, misused resources (over-claimed imprest, attend training for fun), took trips to his distant home in northern Kenya under the guise of making official trips in his government allocated car), inflated procurement contracts, among other things.
The government inspector appears to agree with the board in most of the allegations against the CEO; but their recommendation is also curious: they don’t say the CEO should be sacked, instead - “…the audit team noted the board had lost faith and trust in the CEO and that they cannot continue to work together as a team. The only prudent action by the minister is to separate the two.”
This bring to mind a similar stand-off a few years ago at Consolidated Bank of Kenya where the Board said the would not renew the contract of the CEO and asked the Minister to appoint a new CEO. However the cards were flipped on the Board and they were all sacked, while the CEO was re-appointed to a new contract
This time around the stakes are different. The board appears stronger and the Minister not as powerful; in fact she is under siege from her own assistant ministers and the Board who used comments against her this week in the media including ‘lying, crying, comical’. So how will this one end? How should it end?
