Kilifi Governor Amason Kingi has hit at the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) for changing the list of those he had proposed for ODM nominations in Kilifi County after the 2017 General Election.
Immediately after the election, there was hue and cry from the locals that some non-Kilifi residents had been nominated to the Kilifi county assembly at the expense of the locals. That decision triggered a lot of political anger then but later the issue went with the wind.
Speaking for the first time over the issues of non-locals nominated to the Kilifi County Assembly in an ODM ticket, the governor said after leading ODM to a sounding victory, he prepared the list as the ODM Kilifi chairman and presented it to the party in Nairobi.
However, he said that it was unfortunate that when the names were gazetted, some of the locals he had proposed for nominations were replaced by non-locals.
The governor spoke in a Giriama dialect in Magarini during a funeral adding that the decision by the party was a big blow he will never forget.
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“I prepared the list of all those we wanted to be nominated from all the seven sub-counties; Ganze, Malindi, Magarini, Kilifi North, Kilifi South, and Rabai. The list was purely local names because they were the ones who had voted in Kilifi. But because I could not override the decision of the party, some of the locals’ names were removed and replaced with non-locals. The party brought up some women from another part of the country to be served at the assembly. Is this not ridicule to the people of Kilifi?” he said.
The Governor said after the decision, he faced a lot of criticism and question from the MCAs and other political leaders together with the people of Kilifi, asking why he accepted the nominations of non-locals.
“If this party was our own, such things could have been avoided and this is the hard lesson we learned. Time is now ripe for us to chat our own political way and stop being dependent on non-local political parties,” he said.
*This article was written by Marion Munywoki for Uzalendo News. Email: uzalendonews24@gmail.com to submit your story.
