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Citizen Weekly

Sunday 14 September 2014

MUTHAMA FOUR-POINT POWER DEAL SHOCKER TO UHURU



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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