[President Uhuru Kenyatta switches lights-on, as he launched the Last Mile Project in Kiambu County, May 28, 2016. Photo/mygov.go.ke]
In 2013, president Uhuru Kenyatta's Jubilee government promised to provide access to electricity for 70 per cent of all households by the end of 2017.
During the March 15, 2017 State of the Nation Address, Uhuru said they had connected an additional 3.7 million new homes to electricity more than doubled the total number of connections made since independence.
He also said they had connected an additional 14,045 public primary schools to electricity, representing over 98 per cent of all public primary schools in the country.
However, Opposition leader Raila Odinga has castigated the numbers, terming them as confusion and contradictions being peddled.
''As of now, we have five wildly different numbers. The president’s figure is 2.9 million, CS Treasury says it is 3.7 million, the Energy CS says it is 5.5 million, and the Deputy Chief of Staff Nzioki Waita says 5.8m. The Kenya Power and Lighting Company’s (KPLC) figure is 2.3m,'' Raila said.
He indicated it was worth pointing out that the 5.8 million figure corresponded to the total number of KPLC customers, and not households (domestic) as claimed by Waita.
Addressing the press, Tuesday, he revealed that KPLC staff had been inflating the electricity connection figure to conform to the Jubilee administration’s targets.
''The media recently reported that Kenya Power deliberately reported ‘fake’ numbers to meet their targets as a result of pressure from the Jubilee administration to connect one million new customers.''
The ODM party boss further said an internal audit was reported to have showed that about one million of the connections from the 3.6 million new customers were fake or had never been topped up.
''Jubilee says power output has risen by 657 from 1,765 MW in 2013. Yet manufacturers and domestic users are feeling the pinch of frequent electricity outages and power surges.''
''The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics reports in the 2016 Economic Survey that in 2015 rural electrification connections increased by 174,690 from 528,552 to 703,190. Projecting with this figure suggests that the total number of household connections over the last four years of at best 800,000,'' concluded Odinga.