High Court keeps National Infrastructure Fund running, orders full money disclosure
Key points
- Justice Patricia Nyaundi declined a blanket suspension of the National Infrastructure Fund Act, 2026.
- Court found the constitutional questions substantial and warned petitions could become academic without interim visibility.
- Order: within 30 days, Auditor-General-certified accounts of all money received and spent since establishment.
- Respondents must also file transaction reports every three months until final determination; each side bears own costs.
The High Court refused to freeze the National Infrastructure Fund Act, 2026, but stripped the government of opacity while constitutional petitions run, Eastleigh Voice reported from Justice Patricia Nyaundi's ruling.
Petitioners argue the statute sidelines the Senate, weakens parliamentary money oversight, undercuts the Controller of Budget's mandate, lets privatisation proceeds sit outside the Consolidated Fund, and passed without adequate public participation. The judge called those issues substantial — neither frivolous nor insubstantial — and accepted the risk that billions could move while the case waits.
Why not a full stop order
Nyaundi held that a blanket ban on operationalising the Act would disrupt government functions and ongoing infrastructure programmes. Balance of convenience, she said, favours transparency inside public view and constitutional safeguards rather than a total halt. That is a classic interim design: keep the machine on, force the dashboard open.
Concretely, the State must file within 30 days Auditor-General-certified accounts covering every deposit into Central Bank or commercial accounts and every expenditure or allocation from the Fund since establishment. After that, transaction reports must continue every three months until the petitions are determined. Each party bears its own costs on this stage.
What the paper trail must show
If privatisation receipts and infrastructure draws are as large as critics claim, certified accounts will either calm markets or fuel the constitutional attack. Senate, CoB and civil society now have a court-backed calendar to test whether money paths match the Act's sales pitch.
Politics desk: Politics. Watch the 30-day filing: missing line items or partial bank lists will matter as much as legal theory. Quarterly reports should be public, not only lodged under seal, if "public view" is to mean more than a court registry number.
The ruling's civic core is dual: infrastructure cashflows need not freeze on allegation alone, and multi-billion funds cannot hide behind "ongoing programmes" while constitutionality is live. Disclosure is the bridge the court built between those two truths.
Based on Eastleigh Voice reporting of Justice Nyaundi's interim orders. The full judgment text and later appellate steps control formal holdings.
