Artist Wambui Kamiru Collymore, the widow of former Safaricom chief executive Bob Collymore, has called on Kenyans to safeguard public assets, saying they are collectively owned by all citizens.
In a statement shared on Sunday, Kamiru said taxpayers finance government property and should therefore take responsibility for protecting it for future generations.
“Anything owned by government is owned by you. You are government,” she said.
“You pay for all public assets: national parks, sites of national heritage, public schools, public hospitals, the three parks in CBD, GK vehicles and army/police uniforms, even riparian land.”
She added that Kenyans should be concerned about the state of public spaces and resources, warning that neglect threatens the country’s heritage.
“As such, it is our duty to protect what we are supposed to hand down to future generations of Kenyans,” she said.
“Those are our collective assets. We must worry about the current state of affairs.”
Kamiru reminded citizens that paying taxes or simply holding a Kenyan birth certificate gives individuals a stake in the country’s shared wealth and resources.
“If you pay taxes, if your parents or grandparents paid taxes, and even if all you have is a Kenyan birth certificate, those assets are yours for all of us to use,” she said.
“You are not poor or landless. Public goods for the public.”
Her statement comes two months after President William assented the Privatization Act on October 15, 2025.
The Act is criticised to have opened the door for the sale of the country’s national assets without adequate parliamentary oversight or public participation.
Among the critics is former Chief Justice David Maraga who said the law risks placing key state assets in foreign hands and undermining public accountability
“It grants the CS Treasury power to create a privatisation programme which may include an unlimited number of public entities earmarked for privatisation,” he said on October 21, 2025.
Sections 22 and 23 of the Act allow the Cabinet Secretary to table the privatisation programme before the National Assembly for ratification within 60 days.
If the Assembly fails to act within that period, the process automatically proceeds within 30 days without parliamentary approval.
He stated that “the most outrageous part of this process is that the ratification request is only to be accompanied by brief descriptions of the entities undergoing privatisation, brief reasons for privatisation, and expected benefits including expected revenue”.
Maraga noted that the Act does not require the Treasury to include valuations of the entities in the ratification request.
“This is meant to entirely circumvent the necessary elaborate parliamentary oversight and neuter public participation,” the former CJ said.
The National Assembly defended the new law saying it would streamline the sale of state enterprises and improve efficiency, transparency and economic competitiveness.
by SHARON MWENDE
