Former President Uhuru Kenyatta hailed the outgoing Interior Cabinet Secretary (CS), Fred Matiang'i, while addressing a ministerial forum hosted by Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.
While explaining the critical role Matiang'i played in his administration on Monday, October 17, Uhuru told dignitaries in Nigeria that he formed an intergovernmental coordination committee chaired by the CS.
The former head of state implored Matiang'i, who he argued went overboard by organising daily meetings that helped his administration fast-track development projects.
Government projects were, therefore, completed on time, unlike his first term, where several projects stalled.
"We created a government coordination committee that was chaired by a minister who is with me here today (Matiang'i) and whom I hope will be allowed to share with you on the technical presentation on how they went about it. Under him, they met regularly."
"We also had a permanent secretary who met every week and prepared briefs on programmes and what each Ministry was supposed to do to allow our flagship programs move at a much faster pace," Uhuru stated.
According to the former commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Matiang'i assigned specific roles to county commissioners who were expected to give regular reports on projects' progress in the country.
After the meetings, the CS shared the details of the meetings with Uhuru, who then issued further directives.
Defending the move to give Matiang'i more powers and creation of the Presidential Delivery Unit, Uhuru told Nigerian delegates that his first term was characterised by slow service delivery and, to some extent, stalling of government projects.
"Despite the successes that we had, we were not able to move with the kind of pace that we wanted, which necessitated the second term for us to re-evaluate how our delivery unit works. And we moved from the point of delivery as a unit to the government being a delivery agent as a whole and incorporating the Presidential Delivery Unit (PDU).
"As a result of doing so, many projects were completed, if not on schedule, well ahead of schedule, and this is something I believe resulted in us being able to deliver where in many cases previously, we were unable to," he insisted.
President Buhari, in his message, indicated that he invited Uhuru to share details on the transition process and how he ran the government, months before the August 9 polls.
