When President William Ruto formed the government, he promised to reduce the number of presidential advisers as part of his austerity measures.

However, Ruto now has at least 20 advisers with some of them serving at the level of Cabinet Secretaries while others are at the level of Principal Secretaries, gobbling up more than Sh1 billion to run their offices annually.

The question being raised is whether the President needs all these advisers, yet he has Cabinet Secretaries, Principal Secretaries and technocrats in the relevant ministries who are best suited to perform most of the duties assigned to the advisors.