From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8514675.stm

Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki has asked eight senior officials to step down pending inquiries into two corruption scandals.

One involves the reported loss of $26m in a subsidised maize scam.

The other centres on the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of dollars in the education ministry.

President Kibaki has asked the officials to vacate their offices for three months to allow for inquiries into the allocation of public funds.

Four of the officials are permanent secretaries.

Just hours before Mr Kibaki's move, two of the officials - both senior aides of Kenya's Prime Minister Raila Odinga - had announced they would step down to allow investigations into the maize scandal.

Last week, an independent report by auditors from the company Price Waterhouse Coopers revealed that more than $26m had been lost in a scam as money intended to give struggling Kenyans access to subsidized maize was diverted.

The ministry of education financial scandal was unearthed late last year and there have been growing calls for senior heads to roll.

The fact that no government ministers have lost their jobs after both these scandals will be seen by many as a sign that Kenya's politicians are pretty much unaccountable.

Not for the first time in a country which is plagued by corruption scandals, the civil servants have taken the flak but the politicians remain in office.

As one analyst put it, the culture of political responsibility simply does not exist in Kenya.

Update:

[b]Kenya restores suspended ministers[/b]

Source: [URL=http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2010/02/2010215132441235246.html]Aljazeera[/URL]

Kenya's president has revoked the suspension of two ministers just hours hours after they were sidelined by the country's prime minister amid allegations of corruption.

Mwai Kibaki, who entered into a power-sharing government with Raila Odinga in 2008, said that the prime minister had no power to order the three-month suspensions and contradicted Odinga's assertion that he had taken the decision in consultation with the president.

"The legal provisions on which the prime minister acted do not confer him the authority to cause a minister to vacate his or her office," Kibaki said on Monday.

"Therefore constitutionally, the two ministers remain in office."

The dispute threatens to disrupt the power-sharing government, which was formed by the two rivals to end bloody clashes triggered by a presidential poll in which both men claimed victory.

'Accordance with the law'

In response to Kibaki's revoking of the suspensions, Odinga called on Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary-general and negotiator of the power-sharing deal in 2008, to intervene in the standoff.

"The national accord expressly stipulates that both principals agreed to share power equally in order to bring peace to this country," a statement read out by Musalia Mudavadi, the deputy prime minister, said.
"Legally and constitutionally, neither the president nor the prime minister is superior to the other. The prime minister acted strictly in accordance with the law."

Odinga said that two recent investigations, one into an alleged $26m subsidised maize scam and the other into the reported disappearance of $1.3m at the education ministry, had "laid credible foundations for the two ministers to be investigated".

Ruto is a member of Odinga's own group within the coalition while Ongeri is an ally of Kibaki.

Officials suspended

Odinga's attempted move had followed similar actions against eight other officials by Kibaki.

Kibaki said on late on Saturday that he had suspended the officials for three months after they were "mentioned adversely" in reports on the work of the subsidised maize scheme and Kenya's free primary education programme.

Among the suspended officials were Mohammed Isahakia, the permanent secretary in Odinga's office, and Karol Omondi, the prime minister's chief of staff.

Tensions have risen since both Kibaki and Odinga allies were implicated in the scandals.

In January, the US, Kenya's largest single aid partner, suspended a $7m assistance programme at the education ministry "until there is a credible, independent audit and full accountability".

The infighting also sparked criticism by Nairobi's Western allies of the slow pace of implementing reforms to prevent a repeat of the violence that rocked Kenya in early 2008, killing about 1,500 people.

Last month, a US diplomat warned that Kenya risked another eruption of violence even before its next presidential poll in 2012 if reforms were not put in place soon.

Let's all countries stop their aid money which just fills politician's pockets!

Kenya asked for more than 20m $ to re-forest Mau! Laughable! No tree will be planted. Sure! Unless trees on the ground of a politician's huge mansion!