Let this sink in properly.

The Director General of NTSA, Nashon Kondiwa, has effectively told Kenyans that because there is fraud on eCitizen, motorists should now pay NTSA fines through KCB into an individual account belonging to one Catherine Jerono Tomno.

Read that again.

This is the same government that forced every ministry, department and state agency to route payments through eCitizen in the name of transparency, accountability and sealing loopholes.

The same Ruto administration that has spent years lecturing Kenyans about digitisation, efficiency and ending cash leakages is now casually admitting that the platform it imposed on the entire public sector is apparently so compromised that NTSA has resorted to directing public fines into a personal bank account.

A personal account.

Not a Treasury account.

Not an NTSA collections account.

Not a ring-fenced government revenue account.

A private individual’s account.

And Kenyans are expected to act like this is normal.

This is not a small administrative anomaly. This is a flashing red corruption siren. It is the kind of revelation that should trigger immediate parliamentary scrutiny, Auditor-General intervention, anti-corruption investigations and a public statement from Treasury itself. Because if a state agency can collect public fines through an account bearing an individual’s name while claiming it is doing so to “protect Kenyans from fraud,” then the rot in this administration is far worse than even its critics imagined.

So eCitizen is fraudulent now? ¶

That is the first and most obvious implication of Kondiwa’s statement.

If NTSA is abandoning eCitizen and redirecting fines to KCB because of fraud concerns, then the government is effectively confessing that the very system it has imposed on Kenyans is either compromised, insecure or riddled with corruption. And if that is the case, then we need answers immediately.

How much money has already been lost through eCitizen?

Who is behind the alleged fraud?

Which agencies have been affected?

How long has the government known?

Why has the public not been informed?

And if eCitizen cannot be trusted to receive NTSA fines, why should Kenyans trust it with passport fees, land payments, business registrations, court fines, driving licence renewals and every other government transaction now funnelled through that platform?

You cannot spend years centralising public payments onto a single system, force every Kenyan to use it, and then casually announce that one of the country’s most powerful agencies has moved collections to a personal KCB account because the official platform is too vulnerable to fraud.

That is not reform. That is institutional madness.

Who is Catherine Jerono Tomno and why is public money going into her account?

This is where the scandal gets even uglier. ¶

If NTSA fines are indeed being paid into an account registered in the name of Catherine Jerono Tomno, then the public deserves a full explanation, not PR spin.

Who is she?

What is her official role?

Why is her name attached to money that belongs to the people of Kenya?

Under whose authority was that account opened? Who are the signatories?

Who reconciles the collections?

Who audits the inflows?

How is the money swept into government books?

What legal framework authorises a public agency to collect statutory penalties through an account bearing an individual’s name?

Because once you move public revenue into a personal account structure, you create a scandal by design.

That money can sit there and earn interest. It can be used to create the appearance of massive cash flows. It can become the basis for credit facilities and financial leverage. It can be manipulated, delayed, obscured or mixed with other transactions in ways that make oversight far more difficult. Even if every shilling is eventually remitted, the arrangement itself is outrageous because it opens the door to abuse that should never exist in the first place.

This is precisely why public finance laws and government payment systems exist. Public money is not supposed to pass through private-looking channels because the temptation, opacity and conflict of interest are obvious. The minute a state agency starts saying “send your fines to this individual account at KCB,” the burden shifts to the agency to prove that it is not facilitating theft, laundering risk, abuse of float, or a parallel collection system outside proper public accountability controls.

And NTSA has not done that.

The official excuse makes the scandal worse, not better

What makes this even more damning is the explanation being offered.

Kondiwa is not saying this was an isolated mistake or a rogue instruction that slipped through. He is saying it was done to protect Kenyans from fraud on eCitizen. In other words, the defence of this bizarre arrangement is not that it was accidental. The defence is that it was deliberate.

Think about how insane that sounds.

A government agency tasked with enforcing road safety and collecting statutory fines is effectively saying: Yes, we know the official government payments platform is unsafe, so instead of fixing it, securing it, prosecuting the fraudsters or suspending the compromised process, we have chosen to direct public money into an account under an individual’s name at a commercial bank.

That is not a solution. That is a confession of state failure wrapped in a corruption loophole.

If eCitizen is compromised, then the government must come clean, publish the audit trail, identify the breaches, suspend affected channels and restore confidence through proper institutional measures. What it cannot do is improvise a backdoor banking arrangement and expect the public to clap because the account happens to be sitting at KCB.

The bank is not the issue here. The issue is governance, legality and control of public funds.

Now connect it to the bigger NTSA money machine

This is not happening in a vacuum.

The Daily Nation recently exposed how the Ruto family is allegedly entangled in the NTSA smart driving licence deal worth KSh45 billion, a project that has already raised serious questions about procurement, beneficiaries and the commercial interests orbiting state services. That deal on its own was enough to trigger alarm because it suggested that NTSA is no longer just a transport regulator; it is a lucrative cash cow sitting at the intersection of licensing, fines, digital systems and politically connected contracts.

Now add this latest revelation to the picture.

A state agency tied to a multi-billion shilling smart licence deal is also telling Kenyans to pay fines into an account under an individual’s name because eCitizen has too much fraud.

How exactly are Kenyans supposed to read that?

What are we being asked to believe here — that this is all innocent coincidence? That a government drowning in corruption allegations just happened to stumble into one of the most suspicious public payment arrangements imaginable, and that we should simply trust them because they say it is for our own protection?

No. Kenyans are not stupid.

When you put these pieces together, the picture that emerges is one of a state apparatus so consumed by rent-seeking, shortcuts and internal patronage networks that even basic revenue collection now looks like a shell game. The smart licence billions on one side. A personal-account fines system on the other. eCitizen invoked as both the government’s great transparency miracle and, apparently, a fraud risk too dangerous for NTSA to use.

This is not governance. It is organised confusion, and organised confusion is one of corruption’s favourite hiding places.

What this means for every Kenyan motorist

Every Kenyan who has paid or may pay an NTSA fine should be deeply concerned.

Because once the collection chain is contaminated, every question becomes valid. Was the money properly receipted? Was it reflected in government systems immediately? Was it held somewhere before being swept into state accounts? Who had visibility over the daily balances? Were reconciliation reports generated? Could some payments disappear without the public ever knowing? If there is a dispute tomorrow, what proof does a motorist have that money sent into a personal-name account was properly treated as a statutory fine and not something else?

This is how trust in institutions collapses.

People are already exhausted by arbitrary enforcement, opaque fines, impunity on the roads, digital systems that fail when you need them most, and government agencies that behave like they are doing citizens a favour by accepting money. Now imagine adding the fear that your NTSA fine may be entering a murky payment chain that even the agency’s own explanation cannot make sound lawful or clean.

It is an outrage.

Parliament, Treasury, KRA, the Auditor-General and EACC should be all over this

This is not something that can be brushed aside with a press statement and a few technical excuses.

If public money has been routed through an account under an individual’s name, then the country needs a forensic explanation immediately. Parliament should summon NTSA. Treasury should state whether such an arrangement was authorised. The Auditor-General should demand the full trail of collections, remittances, signatories, reconciliations and account-opening documents. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission should examine whether the arrangement violated procurement, public finance and anti-corruption safeguards. The Controller of Budget should also be asking whether statutory revenue was collected in a manner consistent with the law.

And if there is no clean legal and administrative explanation, then heads should roll.

Because the danger here is not only the possibility of theft. It is the normalisation of lawless public finance practices. Once Kenyans are conditioned to accept that state agencies can collect fines through personal-name accounts “for convenience” or “for protection,” then the door is wide open for every kind of abuse imaginable.

This is the Ruto administration in one scandal

If anyone wanted a perfect snapshot of how this administration operates, this may be it.

First, centralise everything under a grand digital promise. Then quietly admit the system is compromised. Then invent an opaque workaround that creates even more room for abuse. Then expect the public to move on before the dots are connected. Meanwhile, the same ecosystem is orbiting billion-shilling deals, politically connected interests and endless scandals that all somehow point back to the same rotten culture of extraction.

The tragedy is that this is no longer shocking. It is becoming routine.

Kenyans are being governed by a class of officials who appear incapable of distinguishing between public office and private opportunity. Every institution becomes a toll station. Every system becomes a hustle. Every reform becomes a racket waiting to happen. And when they are caught, the explanation is never accountability. It is always a story, a diversion, a technicality, a “misunderstanding,” or in this case, a claim that public money had to be funnelled through an individual’s KCB account to protect citizens from fraud on the government’s own platform.

That should terrify everyone.

Because it means the people in charge are either hopelessly incompetent, breathtakingly corrupt, or both. And either way, the country pays the price.

Kenyans should not let this story die

This is one of those moments that must not be allowed to disappear under the usual avalanche of scandals. NTSA must be forced to publish the full details of this payment arrangement. Nashon Kondiwa must be pressed to explain, in exact terms, why fines were directed to an account under Catherine Jerono Tomno’s name, how much money has passed through it, who authorised it, and what safeguards were in place. Treasury must tell the country whether this was legal. And if it was not, then prosecutions should follow.

Because the issue here is bigger than one account or one agency. The issue is whether public institutions in Kenya still understand that public money is sacred, or whether they now see every state process as just another corner to cut, another loophole to exploit and another opportunity to loot behind bureaucratic jargon.

NTSA has now handed Kenyans a scandal that captures the rot in one frame: a government that forced the country onto eCitizen, a regulator claiming eCitizen is too fraudulent to trust, and public fines allegedly being funnelled into an individual KCB account while billion-shilling NTSA deals swirl around politically connected players.

If that does not scream corruption, impunity and state failure, then nothing will.