Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has said he sympathises with President Ruto for not having information that Kenyans opposed the Finance Bill 2024.
While speaking in Mombasa on Wednesday moments after President Ruto withdrew the Finance Bill 2024, Gachagua said his boss has now agreed that they need to listen to the people.
"I know President Ruto, had he known two months ago that the people of Kenya did not want anything to do with the Finance Bill 2024, he would not have asked his parliamentary party to pass it through," Gachagua said.
He further said it is unfortunate because there exist organisations paid by the public to give Ruto and government intelligence yet they failed.
"We have a dysfunctional National Intelligence Service (NIS) that has exposed the President, government and the people of Kenya," he said.
"They slept on the job and it took peoples' death in protests across the country for the President to know the truth about what the people of Kenya feel yet there is an organisation paid for by the public to inform him."
Gachagua additionally said that officers of the National Police Service have relayed information to him personally in confidence that they did not get advance briefs about the magnitude of the protests across the country.
"Since independence, there have been protests around Parliament but never before have protesters invaded Parliament," he said.
Gachagua claimed that this is why the security sector was caught off guard by the wrath of angry Kenyans exercising their rights.
"Noordin Haji must take responsibility for the deaths, mayhem, for failing President Wiliam Ruto, the government and Kenyans by not doing his job," Gachagua claimed.
Gachagua particularly pointed the blame at Haji and said he must resign and allow the President to pick a competent replacement.
He also asked President Ruto to recall with urgency the three director generals and thirteen officials who were reassigned to return and reconstruct NIS.
