Rose Ngugi, is one of many Kenyan women that have questionable ways on how they landed some positions. This openly tribal Director is running Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis, a donor-funded government policy thinktank like her bedroom affairs. In fact, the institution is falling at a terribly high speed.
Since 2017, when Ngugi joined the once vibrant agency, more than 10 Ph.D. top-notch researchers have left the Institute and joined others. Her highhandedness and political dictatorship has seen another senior researcher in the trade and foreign policy had his contract terminated last year after he championed for the rights of his colleagues in the union.
According to the Weekly Citizen, other three senior researchers are fine-tuning their exit strategy from the institute in the course of this year in protest of Ngugi’s colonial leadership style. She is a mess and the union is in shambles right now. Sky-high research consultants have been avoiding the institution like a plague.
Rose Ngugi, in her management that is dominated by 70 percent Kikuyu, has to meet with her every week on Monday for close to seven hours. and when on assignment outside the office she would sit the staff in hotel conference rooms lecturing them to as late as 2 am. She uses the long meeting to abuse senior researchers and staff who have refused to subscribe to her unprofessional leadership. Last year, there was drama when two senior researchers blatantly waned to sit in the management board.
In 2019, she implemented an illegal salary deduction of Sh259,000 from some employees. Kenyan Bulletin confirms that that is against the employment Act and the public service manual.
If you are wondering why I said that she is running the institution like her village kiosk, her secretary is now the de facto Human Resource officer. As if that is not enough of bullshit, the same secretary is KIPPRA’s Deputy Executive Director. Rose is fighting senior researchers who, according to her, are reluctant to obey the secretary’s instructions. The same secretary continues to disobey Salaries and Remuneration Commission policy on the quarter per diem and playing monkey business with staff salary.
Ngugi has entrenched tribalism, nepotism, cronyism and incompetence at the institute given her refusal to have a competent human resources officer hired or seconded from the parent ministry. Recently she secretly promoted her nephew to be a Deputy Director locking out experienced researchers.
In what looks like another managerial corrupt fleecing scheme, the auditor of KIPPRA and Supply Chain Management boss openly conducting businesses with the institute through proxies. The Director is well aware of the arrangement yet it is against the public ethics officers Act and conflict of interest.
Sources speaking to this site stated that Ngugi’s hatred towards Luos and Luhya is not a secret and has completely politicized her sensitive position. Any political critic of her preferred leader–DP Ruto– is sidelined and publicly shamed by the Director. She is said to be amongst top favorites to be the Finance CS is William Ruto’s kitchen cabinet.
Since 2017 when she joined KIPPRA, Rose completely killed the programme coordinators office which is used to coordinate research work in the institute and has gone further by micromanaging departmental work plans. She has collapsed the KIPPRA’s internal publication processes and corruptly allowing papers of friends to be published without undergoing peer review mechanisms or disregarding comments from outside peer reviewers.
