From left to right: Wajir West MP Abdikadir Ore, Abdikadir Aden (Mbalambala) and Junet Mohamed (Suna East) during a press conference at Serena Hotel, Nairobi, on March 18, 2017. They said Jubilee’s forays in the Northern Kenya region are inconsequential. PHOTO | WILLIAM OERI | NATION MEDIA GROUP
By PATRICK LANG’AT
A section of elected leaders from the Somali community on Saturday rubbished as inconsequential President Uhuru Kenyatta’s forays in the Northern Kenya region.
The leaders also faulted a move by President Kenyatta to host members of different clans from the vast region in State House, a move they said was brewing enmity.
Balambala MP Abdikadir Aden, Suna East’s Junet Mohamed and three other legislators accused the Jubilee administration of harassment, coercion and “wholesale buying of leaders’ from the region.
“We want to tell the Jubilee government to put to good use its supporters in Northern Kenya because they have only until August to do so,” Mr Aden said at a press briefing in Nairobi.
Others who addressed the press conference are Wajir South MP Abdullahi Diriye, his Wajir West counterpart Abdikadir Ore and Wajir women representative Fatuma Ibrahim.
Last week, Marsabit Governor Ukur Yatani ditched Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement for President Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party.
Governor Yatani formed the Frontier Alliance Party which he said he will use for his re-election, but will back President Kenyatta for the top job.
State House also said that MPs Roba Duba (Moyale), Chachu Ganya (North Horr), Nasra Ibrahim (Woman Rep) and Joseph Lekuton (Laisamis) also defected with Mr Yatani.
On Saturday, the leaders said they will not be intimidated into joining Jubilee.
EXTRA-JUDICIAL KILLINGS
“If some of our leaders have been bought by corrupt money, intimidated by an illegitimate power and made to succumb, we the people must stand up.
“We will have no one but ourselves to blame if we backed Jubilee today only for it to kill our sons and detain our women tomorrow,” the leaders said in a joint statement.
The leaders argued that the Jubilee government had, backed by members of the Somali community in the administration, denied the region identity cards, oversaw rampant extra-judicial killings and execution “in the name of terrorism.”
“Losing a family member to the police has become a way of life in Somali and Muslim dominated counties because the Jubilee regime has decided that Kenyans of Somali origin, by virtue of their faith and names, are terrorists,” the leaders said.
Mr Diriye said: “They have denied us IDs and then are rounding up the youth for not having the very document they denied them.”
However, President Kenyatta has insists that his administration has opened up the region for trade and had made it more secure.
Source: Daily Nation
