Shabana bank Ruto's first Ksh 10m

The pledge, and where it stands

According to Capital Sports, President Ruto has now honoured the first half of his April commitment, with Ksh 10 million confirmed as received by the club. The remaining Ksh 10 million has not yet arrived, and no timeline for the second instalment has been made public. Whether conditions are attached to either tranche is also unclear from the available reporting.

Presidential money flowing directly to a club in the FKF Premier League is not a common occurrence. It puts Shabana in a position most of their domestic rivals simply are not in: liquid, and with more potentially on the way.

What Ksh 10 million means at this level

Kenyan top-flight football does not run on the kind of budgets that make Ksh 10 million feel routine. For context, it is the sort of sum that can reshape a squad in the local transfer market, fund infrastructure work, or cover operational costs that smaller clubs quietly struggle with across a full season. Shabana have not publicly confirmed how they intend to deploy the funds, so the specific use remains an open question.

The club now has breathing room that most FKF Premier League sides would take without hesitation.

The politics of football funding

Presidential backing for a specific club, rather than a governing body or a national programme, is the kind of arrangement that tends to attract scrutiny alongside the goodwill. Shabana are a historic Kenyan club with a genuine supporter base in Kisii, and the pledge appears to have originated from a direct interaction between the president and the club rather than a formal government sports fund. That distinction matters when people start asking whether the second Ksh 10 million arrives on schedule, and what, if anything, comes with it.