Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto are gearing up for re-election in August, but the country is evenly divided on their scorecard and fulfilment of their pre-election promises.

The Kenyan leaders, who recently formed the Jubilee Party after 12 parties dissolved to join it, say they have performed well and deserve another term.

Aware that Kenyan elections are characterised by ethnic divisions, the duo has lately been criss-crossing the country, launching infrastructure projects and to win over opposition supporters and maintain support in their political backyards of central Kenya and the Rift Valley, which propelled them to power in the last election.

In 2013, the then Jubilee Alliance, which included The National Alliance and the United Republican Party, campaigned on a platform of creating one million jobs per year for the youth, modernising road and railway transport, improving human capital by investing in education, increasing power generation and connecting rural households, besides fighting corruption.

Mr Ruto, a staunch defender of the government’s record has been bandying around figures that the opposition has disputed. He says that the Jubilee government has helped connect 5.5 million Kenyans to the electricity grid, compared with 2.1 million in 2013, that the standard gauge railway will reach Nairobi in June, and 6,000km of roads will have been built by the next election.

The DP also says the government has provided 10,000 youth with employment at the National Youth Service (NYS), built 130 technical training colleges and improved access to health care, with adequate dialysis equipment to cater for 285 kidney patients per month, compared with 25 before they came to power.

But Nairobi lawyer Gitobu Imanya says the only tangible achievement of the Jubilee regime is the streamlining of the education sector by Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i, pointing out that UhuRuto have simply implemented projects that had been put in place by the previous government.

“They made promises to connect all primary schools in the country to electricity, but that has not happened,” Mr Imanyara said. “Security remains a major challenge as Al Shabaab continues to attack us.”

Jubilee has had to grapple with runaway corruption in public institutions, with the NYS losing about $18 million and the Ministry of Health $49 million.

These scandals have given fodder to the opposition to criticise the government. The Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (Cord), led by Raila Odinga, maintains that Jubilee has failed to deliver its pre-election pledges and has been busy plundering public resources.

In its manifesto, Jubilee had promised to cut wastage in government and fight corruption by giving the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission the power to prosecute corruption cases as happens in other African countries. The party also promised to bar anyone convicted of corruption from working in the public sector.

Six ministers were relieved of their duties over corruption allegations.