Disability-rights activist and flamboyant Meru businessman Michael Makarina once closed every press briefing with the rallying cry “System iko sawa!” For months he defended President William Ruto’s administration, urging the Head of State to “stand with IG Kanja and his deputies” and dismissing critics as opportunists.
But a midnight dash to Nairobi’s Aga Khan Hospital has turned the staunch government loyalist into one of its harshest detractors.
Makarina says he arrived “in pain, overwhelmed and weak,” only to discover that the Social Health Authority (SHA) and its flagship Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF) could not foot his basic admission costs.
“My wife was running up and down, trying to push things through SHA and SHIF. She tried. But nothing was moving. The system failed us in our hour of need,” he wrote from his hospital bed.
When the digital portal stalled, former DCI boss George Kinoti wired the full deposit – proof, Makarina quipped, that “brotherhood still works faster than bureaucracy.”
Just five weeks earlier, Makarina was on television urging Kenyans to ignore “propaganda” about state brutality after blogger Albert Ojwang’s death.
“There are things I know about this government that many people do not,” he insisted while defending Deputy Inspector-General Eliud Lagat. That televised loyalty capped years of viral clips in which the wheelchair-bound politician trumpeted the Bottom-Up agenda and chided anyone who “disrespects our President.”
His sudden U-turn, therefore, has turbo-charged an already loud chorus of public complaints:
- Patients Left Stranded: On SHA’s launch day last October, cancer and dialysis patients in Kisii, Garissa and Nairobi were turned away as hospitals demanded cash up-front, saying NHIF cards were instantly obsolete while SHA log-ins kept crashing.
- Hospitals Starved of Cash: A July 15 survey by the Rural & Urban Private Hospitals Association found that only 20 % of clinics had received full SHA reimbursements. 36% resorted to bank loans; 13 % risked auction by creditors.
- Benefit Caps Called “Laughable”: Analysts note that SHA’s annual dental limit (KSh 2,000) barely covers a single filling, while maternity caps are a fraction of real delivery costs, leaving families to top up from their pockets.
- Auditor-General Red Flags: A March report accused SHA of opaque procurement and “systemic weaknesses that amount to murder by bureaucracy,” triggering a civil-society petition.
Meanwhile, Health CS Aden Duale insists over 9,000 public and private facilities are now contracted and July payouts will “ease the cash crunch.”
But agitation is rising: mission hospitals have issued ultimatums, doctors’ unions threaten strikes, and the Employment Court has faulted SHA’s hiring of former NHIF staff.
For State House, Makarina’s about-face is costly optics. He was one one of the most vocal supporters of a medical scheme under intense fire, and he being so publicly humiliated by the same scheme cannot be the news anyone tasked to sell SHIF to the public would want.
His Facebook post, calling SHA “a sweet story in press conferences but a nightmare on the ground”, has clocked thousands of likes and comments.
