Who's Fooling Who? The BBC Gets Entangled in William Ruto's Endless Web of Lies

In what could be the most bizarre gaffe in its 102-year history, the BBC finds itself caught in William Ruto's unrelenting salvo of falsehoods.

Through it's @BBCWorld X account, and linking an article from BBC.com appearing under the byline "Wycliffe Muia, BBC News, Nairobi," the Beeb on Friday, 13 September 2024, proclaimed, rather quite sensationally, "Germany to Welcome 250,000 Kenyans in Labour Deal."

Except, it was a lie.

And the refutation came swift and furious. A couple of hours later, in a pithily worded post, the Bundesministerium des Innern und für Heimat (that's Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community to you), via it's X account @BMI_Bund, attempted to put the ducks in a row and straighten their feathers: "This Information is clearly false," came the gobsmacking rebuke. "The agreement between Germany and Kenya does not include any numbers or quotas of skilled workers who will have the opportunity to work in Germany. All applicants must fulfil the strict requirements of the German Skilled Immigration Act."

Dripping with egg on face, the BBC has since deleted their embarrassing X post, and added a caveat to Muia's article: "Correction 14 September 2024: An earlier version of this article put a figure on how many Kenyan workers would be allowed into Germany under the deal. The German interior ministry corrected this to state that the deal did not specify a figure."

So, why did the BBC attempt to lie to the world? And where did they pick the dubious and phantom "250,000 jobs for Kenyans" from?

That's the question everyone wants the answer to. And the answer, it turns out, might well be found on X. As one Kenyan user remarked in consternation, "The circus that is this government heh? They bought international media to push the false agenda?" An therein lies the crux.

The second clue can be found in the byline. Geographically speaking, Berlin is much closer to London than it is to Nairobi. So why on earth would the BBC rely on a reporter all the way out here in the tropics to cover an event taking place literally next door?

To put it bluntly, was Wycliffe Muia compromised to write favourably and project the Ruto administration in good light? He is, after all, Kenyan, and some of his countrymen (TRIVIA: Who knows a Kenyan better than a Kenyan?) are beginning to think so. And this line of inquiry didn’t just drop from the sky like a meteorite; it’s got some historical baggage.

"Ruto Hires Bloggers to Tackle Negative Publicity on State Projects," screamed one daily on the 9th of August, 2024, as William Ruto, beleaguered and painted into a corner by an impossible torrent of toxic press—following the gallant efforts of one patriot, Morara Kebaso's crisscrossing the country and whistleblowing projects (or "injecting," as Kenyans have come to call such pressure tactics against the government) that the president had launched with much razzmatazz and fanfare, only to quickly fizzle out—sought to regain the runaway PR handle of the situation. Many of these projects lie abandoned and incomplete or even unstarted, and all that exists of them is the mounted dated plaque that the president unveiled during launch and nothing else. Meanwhile, contractors have been paid wholesale and, in one case, paid an "inconvenience fee" running into hundreds of millions because the government took too long to pay them for work they are yet to begin. Only in Kenya. The wider import of Morara's opus (cheekily nicknamed "The Vampire Diaries" in reference to Ruto's government sucking the country dry), is that public coffers are being looted at an unprecedented rate under the direct supervision of William Ruto.

Now, anyone who knows William Ruto knows that PR and optics matter to him much. Would it then be overly outrageous to suggest that he "convinced" Muia to lay it on thick about his "PR coup" in Germany? 250,000 jobs in a tanking economy is, after all, no mean feat, and certainly a cause for celebrations all round. As one Ruto supporter, evidently bedside himself, posted on X, "On this day, President Ruto's government created a quarter million jobs for Kenyans in Germany. No one has ever done this in Africa."

Neither were the cognoscenti spared...

Talk about failure to read the room, right? With everything that's going on in Europe, the last thing we needed was William Ruto's avarice and irrational lust for the limelight placing a permanent target on the backs of Kenyans, particularly those in Europe. BREAKING NEWS: Immediately after the German Foreign Ministry corrected BBC's lie, Germany suspended the Schengen visa due to security concerns from illegal immigrants.Turks, Middle Easterners, and Africans will no longer be allowed into Germany. When will William Ruto begin to see the destructive consequences of his lies?!

(Meantime, a German claimed, "You can't be skilled with an IQ of 70." We were ready to fight back, but then we remembered David Ndii and William Ruto with their PhDs, our elected leaders with IQs of below 30...and let’s just say, we quietly saw his point.)

For William Ruto, it's all about the optics. Truth and facts be damned. And then, there's the little matter of, as another media outlet reported it on 19 February, 2024, "Deal to give 250,000 Kenyans jobs in Germany to be sealed by June - Ruto." (Strictly not to be confused with another headline from another news site just one day erstwhile: "Ruto Proposes New Reform to Prevent Africans From Seeking Jobs on Other Continents." This visionary concept was outlined in an address to the African Union General Assembly of the Committee of the African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change in Addis Ababa on 18 February, 2024.) William Ruto posseses an unequalled talent for being creative with the truth.

In addition to the millions of jobs he promised jobless Kenyans in his election campaign, jobs that are yet to become reality almost halfway through his five-year term, William Ruto is clearly under pressure to deliver the quarter million more jobs in Germany that he promised in February, and has been regularly re-promising ever since; with or without Germany's acquiescence.

In Ruto's world where, like in Genesis, speaking things is as good as materialising them, all he needs to do is pronounce the 250,000 jobs and, POOF! There will appear 250,000 jobs in Germany, specially sequestered for Kenyans. Which makes a strong case for the Ruto administration leaking the phantom jobs to the media.

Except, we're not in Genesis, and Germany is not Eden...not to mention, as Nominated MP Sabina Chege reminded us this week, William Ruto—who, on a very early trip outside Kenya as president, gleefully announced to a Seoul church that "Those who believe in God won [the hotly contested 2022 election]—long ago forgot about prayers and has "kept the Bible down."

In the end, only Wycliffe Muia can tell us whence he plucked his 250,000 jobs, and what he intended to accomplish by so spectacularly amplifying their glad tidings to the world.