President William Ruto amazed Kenyans with his powerful speech that he delivered at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday.
His speech covered a wide variety of topics including the bottom up model, call upon IMF to give loan reliefs to countries hit hard by the covid pandemic, Drought among other things.
The president’s eloquence and eye contact as he read through the speech left Kenyan in awe and admiration as many congratulated him for representing Kenya well.
Unbeknown to many, lawyer Eric Ng’eno is believed to have been behind the great speech and many others that Ruto has delivered on different occasions
Ng’eno began working with President Ruto after the 2007/2008 post election violence. In a past interview with The Standard, Ng’eno revealed that he started off as his personal assistant. According to him, Ruto was then looking for someone with a legal background and excellent communication skills.
Ng’eno would conduct research and secretariat services. Later, his boss got an appointment in government as Agriculture minister.
“Initially, I didn’t understand why communication skills were that important for him. But he was clearly farsighted. When the Grand Coalition Government was formed, he was appointed Minister for Agriculture. As a minister, Hon Ruto wanted technical materials to be packaged in a language that could be used to successfully engage a national audience. He is rather good at it, and we spent lots of time going through a lot of documents and preparing him for presentations at various levels,” he narrated.
He later got introduced to former head of state Uhuru Kenyatta in 2012 and officially joined his communication team in May 2013 till June 2020 when he was unceremoniously kicked out alongside Dennis Itumbi, external press director Munyori Buku and events director James Kinyua over inconsistent messaging. Those who were kicked out of the statehouse joined Ruto’s communication team.
Ng’eno made a comeback in the statehouse was even captured polishing the speech that Ruto read after Supreme Court’s ruling on September 5.
Aside from working for Ruto, Ng’eno is a Partner at Kipsang & Mutai Advocates . His roles at the law firm include litigation, research and legal advisory.
In Ruto’s UN speech, many however believe that there were several other contributors including Foreign Affairs PS Amb Macharia Kamau, Kenya’s UN Ambassador Martin Kimani and Kenya’s Ambassador to US Lazarus Amayo among other individuals in his press unit.
RELATED STORY:Key Evidence Proving That President Ruto Read His Speech From A Teleprompter At The UN General Assembly
