The road leading to President Paul Kagame’s country home is pressed with humble marram branching off at Nyagatovu village along the Kigali-Kayonza highway. It has been like this for many years lined with acacia trees.
Kagame does not mind driving on this dusty bumpy and sometimes slippery road to his Muhazi lakeshore country home. As head of state he has been considerate enough not to demand for a tarmacked road for reasons that the country doesn’t have enough resources to accord him preferential treatment.
But for Infrastructure Minister Claver Gatete dust is not something he would tolerate around his home and would do anything within his reach to fight dust or mud around his private palace at Gishushu, Remera in Kigali.
One day, Minister Gatete called the Vice Mayor of the City of Kigali and instructed him to install humps in front of his house along a new road. The road, almost one Kilometer, also happens to have been built under his instructions.
Going by current market estimates, a tarmacked road can cost up to US$1 million and would require serious bidding.
For Gatete, it only required a phone call to the city mayors and have him drive smoothly to and from his luxurious palace, an act that has outraged the President.
President Paul Kagame on Friday chaired the Extended National Executive Committee (NEC) convened at the RPF party headquarters in Rusororo, Gasabo district. One of the key issues discussed was the sophisticated corruption among public officials.
The President mentioned names of officials involved in shameless scandals including; Infrastructure Minister, Clever Gatete, former Governors Emmanuel Gasana, Jean Marrie Vianney Gatabazi, Dr. Diane Gashumba, Robert Nyanvumba and General Patrick Nyanvumba among others.
Apart from manipulating the system to have a tarmacked road by his house and instructing sidewalk pavers extended into his private compound complete with identical humps, Minister Gatete continues to appear in more scandals.
For example, Minister Gatete is said to have illegally and single handedly awarded a tender to a Kenyan Company known as ‘Out Of The Box’, to supply a software to manage government properties by the Rwanda Housing Authority (RHA).
This deal is worth Rwf263 million and was awarded to the Kenyans with ease moreover against the advice of the tender committee at the RHA.
While at the RPF meeting, President Kagame asked Minister Gatete whether he knows a company called ‘Out Of The Box’.
Gatete first said he didn’t know it.
However, the President was not ready to let go. He wanted answers from Minister Gatete and continued cross-examining him.
“Do you know the company or you don’t?” the President asked. “I don’t know the company your Excellency,” Gatete responded in a very timid voice.
The President asked the IGP, Dan Munyuza to step forward and share the details, because Gatete was adamant.
The IGP explained that after Minister Gatete had failed to convince the RHA tender committee to single source the Kenyan company, he flouted the tendering procedures and wrote to the Minister of Finance to authorize payment of the firm.
Sticking to their position, RHA team told Gatete that there are Rwandan companies capable of providing similar services and there was no basis for hiring a foreign firm moreover at such a colossal cost.
Gatete did not want to hear such arguments from RHA- he ignored them.
The IGP testified that Gatete’s letter to the Finance Minister in December 2019 bore his explanation that it was ‘a matter of national interest’.
Kagame turned to Gatete. “I asked you if you did not know about the company. You said you don’t” the President said.
“Now I remember your Excellency,” Gatete responded, trembling and panicking.
“Then, why did you have to lie,” the President insisted.
“I am sorry your Excellency,” Gatete pleaded as the entire hall was dead silent watching how the President was grinding a super minister that once passed as clean.
President Kagame warned him not to proceed with his apologies, because, apparently, according to the President, he has warned him many times and that he kept apologising in the same manner.
Before the case of the Kenyan firm, Kagame asked City Mayor, Pudence Rubangisa and his Vice, Eng. Evaritse Nsanzimana, if Gatete is the one in charge of City, asking them to narrate the circumstances in which Minister Gatete would give orders, warning to lock them up if they lied to him.
“Can Gatete do what he wants,” the President probed the two officials and how the Minister would instruct them to commit an offense.
“Why don’t you have the guts to question?” Kagame pressed harder, wondering if the Engineer is such a fool to be given orders in such a manner. “I don’t know why he didn’t ask you to build him a house.”
Kagame sent the three men back to their seats and picked on other corrupt officials in the room. “It is not over,” he warned.
In the meantime, Gatete could soon be jailed or be fired for his involvement in another scandal involving Christian Rwakunda, Permanent Secretary (MINIFRA), Godfrey Kabera, Director General of National Development Planning at MINECOFIN, Eric Serubibi, Director General, Rwanda Housing Authority (RHA).
The case is now in the courts of law. The suspects are accused of collectively buying a building from a city businessman at an astronomical price of about Rwf10 billion and without going through competitive bidding.
The President told RPF leaders that Gatete connived with PS Caleb to offer the owner of the house more than he had actually asked for; about Rwf7. 5 billion.
“You are a danger to yourself let alone to all of us,” the president told him, and ordered the Police and RIB to interrogate him this coming Monday and submit a report.
“I will decide what to do moving forward,” Kagame said. “I am tired.”
