PhD is not hard stuff, it is hard work. You need time and concentration to make such an achievement. You cannot be huslting, making billion Ksh looting schemes, running nusu govt, chasing anything in a skirt, be at church harambees every Sunday and expect to have time for a doctorate. Those are stories to tell to the vilagers.
Ruto got first class in UON in 1990s and was granted an MSC scholarship - that he left when it was nearly done and joined Y2k - for such a person to nail a year of msc and PHD is easy. This is a science degree...so not easy to fake it.
Anyone can do a Ph.D. in Kenya because there are no significant classes to take and endless zoom meetings with your dissertation chair and the group. Just research from beginning because of no PhD courses to begin with coupled with no effective accountability measures to catch plagiarism and more. Ph.D. typically takes 4-8 years to finish. I'm in year 4 of my IT-Cybersecurity Ph.D. program and hopefully will finish by year 5. Still, with it, it is never over until you defend it and the people on the other side unanimously say yes. Usually, when you start, you stay pumped on years one and two, but after year two, the rubber starts meeting the road; by year 4, you are so stressed, and you just want to graduate or go abd (All but Dissertation). The problem is, by then, all the people know you are pursuing a Ph.D., and you can't just stop. So you end up going under or putting all the energy and finish. ABD means you have taken all the Ph.D. classes in the US, usually about 60 credits or 20 courses, depending on the school but you have not successfully finished the dissertation part. After those hard-hitting courses, you have to have good standing in GPA (typically 3.0 GPA and UP) before you embark on the final years of the dissertation. Ph.D. is hard but doable with time, good spine for sitting long hours for years, and support system.