Beleaguered
Machakos senator Johnson Muthama has written to Uhuru Kenyatta asking the
president to deal. According to sources, Muthama is promising to deliver Kambas
to Jubilee at a cost to Uhuru. The cost, a source close to the senator who
strongly asked not to be named said, is an easing and finally binning of the
Malili land case that is the weight tied to his neck pulling him to the ocean
floor.
Muthama
reportedly let the cat out of the bag to an inner circle of his confidants whom
he told not to be unduly distressed by his arraignment in court for theft and
bragged that he has already written to Uhuru laying down his demands and
assured them that knowing how Uhuru is “desperate for the Kamba support”, the
president would play ball.
Apart
from the Malili case, Muthama is also asking the government to throw away the
judiciary house saga matter where he sold the government a house that was not
only incomplete, but was also overvalued. The house was meant to be the
official of the Chief Justice but the house in Runda is not yet ready for
occupation three years after Muthama pocketed Sh300m for it.
But
the most shocking part of the deal Muthama is seeking is that he is allegedly
demanding Sh500m to herd Kambas to Jubilee. It is not known how Uhuru has taken
the letter but those who know Uhuru well say that be might not be in a position
to do any deal especially given that he is said to be looking to work with
fresh leaders in Ukambani. Talk in some quarters has it that Uhuru might have
earmarked Yatta MP Francis Mwangangi as his pointman in Ukambani and cite the
government’s Sh5b worth of development projects initiated in Yatta recently.
Muthama
is understood to have indicated in his letter that he was acting in the know of
Kalonzo Musyoka. Whether this is true or not is not clear. What is clear is
that Kalonzo is now using his own channels to reach Uhuru for a bargain.
Kalonzo’s people however say their man overstayed his overture and that he is
seen as wanting to work with Uhuru after Raila Odinga said that he is going to
stand for president again. Uhuru therefore sees Kalonzo as goods ready to go
for throw-away price and might as such not be too keen on Kalonzo as he might
have been six months ago.
Interestingly,
Kalonzo has been telling friends that he will not accept another political
arrangemet done by Muthama whom he now bitterly blames for his woes.
Apparently, Kalonzo regrets following Muthama’s advice to abandon the G7 and
join Raila in the last elections. What pains Kalonzo most is his discovery
later that Muthama had allegedly pocketed Sh200m to deliver Kalonzo to Raila.
As
if this was not enough, it is also emerging that part of the Malili money might
have ended in Kalonzo’s bank accounts as those Muthama armtwisted as he
allegedly swindled the peasant owners of the ranch claim Muthama told them that
he had instructions from then vice president Kalonzo to accumulate money for Kalonzo’s
2013 presidential campaigns.
Others
who allegedly benefited from the Malili scam are Gideon Ndambuki who was then
Kaiti MP and Philip Kaloki then Kibwezi MP whom the society directors claim
were at the Karura Forest the night Muthama took the directors there and had
them stripped naked and threatened with death if they did not sign documents to
Muthama’s Gateway Logistics Company the seller of the land.
According
to one of the directors Mutua Kanyi, Muthama asked him why he was paying poor
Kambas Sh 1.4m each and directed that they be paid Sh. 1.1m each with the
Sh300,000 balance totaling to Sh189 million going to him. Also in the syndicate
was late George Saitoti’s brother Peter Musengi who together with Muthama and
former information ministry PS Bitange among others are charged.
Following
the cue from Muthama, the society directors some who are charged alongside
Muthama shortchanged the poor society members paying as low as Sh100,000
instead of the Sh1.4m.
It
is against this background that the peasants are now demanding that Muthama and
the directors be made to pay the whole amount and now want the court to attach
properties of the charged to pay them the balance. The now elderly peasants
bought the ranch in the 1960s but successive governments had been colluding
with directors to delay the subdivision and allocation of the lands as they
sold milk and beef cows for decades with farmers getting paltry dividends of
sometimes as low as Sh100 per year or just a bottle of milk.
Year
in year out, directors would lie to the members at AGMs that cattle had been
eaten by lions and so there were no profits made.
When
Mwai Kibaki came power sounding a death kneel to Moi’s reign of darkness, the
directors panicked and started the process of subdividing the ranch as were
other ranches nearby. But just when some of the surviving members were thanking
God for remembering them at the sunset of their years, came in Muthama who is
now accused of removing the food from the peasant Kambas’ mouths.
On
learning that Muthama is now angling towards Uhuru using their names, some of
the peasants Weekly Citizen spoke to said they will walk to State House and
petition their case against Muthama to Uhuru personally. Muthama, it is
alleged, has lately been using Kambas to trade with. He and Kalonzo were
reportedly given Sh100m by Kibaki to have Kalonzo become his VP in 2007 which
lent Kibaki’s government a much-needed national veneer.
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