President Uhuru Kenyatta has pardoned 3908 inmates who had been serving sentences of less than three months as his last order as the head of state, an initiative he stated was bound to change their lives for the better.

"To those who have been pardoned, mine to you is that you should now be changemakers in our society, and restore faith and confidence in our criminal justice system to reciprocate the generosity that has been shown by your motherland through this act of mercy, with a high sense of civic duty and service to your country," he stated.

The president in his last Madaraka Day speech also highlighted his successes during his tenure, setting the record straight for naysayers who have often criticized his decisions in his government.

He pointed out that his decision to focus more on infrastructure was for the good of the country, as it has boosted the economy of the country by achieving what the previous administrations deemed impossible in many sectors including agriculture, transport, and health among others.

"The naysayers said that we should not invest in infrastructure because people don't eat roads and floating bridges. I refuse their pessimism. Without infrastructure, there is no way of finding new possibilities; that is why my administration made it one of our big push investments," the head of state defended.

President Uhuru Kenyatta also defended his decision to use the military in accelerating reforms and development in key government departments, stating that the military accelerated the wiping out of corruption that had brought many institutions to their closure.

“When we took over in 2013, some of the state corporations were rotten from the core and to the core”. We had to drain the swamp from the inside-out,” he recalled.

He mentioned the Kenya Meat Commission which was restored into a profit-making enterprise in record time and the Kenya Shipyard Limited which had collapsed due to mismanagement and corruption, which got a revamp from the KDF to become the largest shipyard in sub-Saharan Africa.

President Kenyatta has defended loans taken by his administration saying they helped accelerate development in the country and mirrored the country's development to that of South Korea which also relied on borrowed funds and shot to become one of the strongest Asian economies in a record 25 years, a quarter of the time span used by first world countries like the US to industrialize.

“The only time that debt is a burden to a nation is if the nation is led by a cabal of looters.  But in the hands of a visionary administration, debt is a catalyst for rapid development,” he said.