Charles
Nyachae, the chairman of the Constitutional Implementation Commission, recently
turned a harambee function at Gionseri Girls Secondary School in Kisii county
into a public forum to magnify his calls for Abagusii political unity.
In
the function which was well attended, including drawing such VIP political
leaders like Deputy President William Ruto, senators Chris Obure (Kisii
ODM) and Janet Ong’era (nominated – ODM) and area governor James Ongwae, Nyachae belaboured his message of Gusii
political unity and working closely with the government of the day if the area
is to realise development and harmony.
His
clarion call was coming at the backdrop of statistics showing that in the last
general elections, the community voted over 75pc for the opposition and mainly
for Raila Odinga. Other voters scattered their votes between former ruling
party Kanu and Ford People that belong to Nyachae’s retired politician father
Simeon Nyachae.
The
unity calls are raising eyebrows at a time when the Jubilee government top
leadership has stepped up campaigns to win over Gusiiland (Kisii and Nyamira
counties including the Abagusii diaspora community) to its side from the
opposition Cord’s political iron grip.
The
Jubilee campaign has taken the shape of trying to rebuild Ford People, through
junior Nyachae, to end Raila dominance in the area. At times, it has appeared
to be a direct pursuit by Jubilee itself to invade the area.
Others
have been deputy governor Joash Maangi, former assistant ministers Omingo Magara
and Richard Onyonka.
The
latest and most surprising entrant in this campaign is Ong’era.
It
is now emerging that Junior Nyachae’s rising chorus of “Abagusii political
unity” is a well choreographed and financed public relations plot to attack and
destroy Cord’s dominance and influence in the area while at the same time,
hoodwink the community return to and rebuild Ford People to help in reviving
and serving the Nyachae family’s wider political and business empire and
interests which crumbled following elder Nyachae’s disastrous crashing out of
bigtime politics seven years ago.
On
the one hand, Junior Nyachae is under immense pressure from Jubilee top
leadership to deliver the entire Abagusii community to the ruling coalition
away from Raila Odinga as a pre-condition for their political and financial
help which he and his ageing father have been pleading for from State
House. This he has been directed must be achieved early enough to enable TNA
and URP retain power in 2017 elections.
On
the other hand, the CIC chairman is being nagged by his father: a former
influential minister under Daniel Moi
regime and earlier on, a powerful provincial administration oligarch during
President Jomo Kenyatta’s regime to work overdrive to revive the family’s name
and control of Abagusii politics. Close family sources say that Mzee Nyachae is
bitter in retirement that his family legacy is in tatters unlike those of
Kenyatta, Moi, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Moses Mudavadi, all whom he considers
to be his political peers.
But
there is heavy resistance underneath to this as the younger Nyachae
campaign due to his family history. Instructively, his grand father, the late
Mzee Musa Nyandusi was a colonial chief and home guard; part of elite Africans
hired and lavished by brutal British colonial administrators to terrorise and
muzzle fellow natives for social, economic and political control. Indeed, it
was in recognition of Musa Nyandusi good work in controlling the Abagusii for
British manipulation and exploitation that his famous son was hand-picked and
hired into the authoritarian provincial administration without any meaningful
academic qualifications and lavished with British training and rapid promotions
to help shape and protect the post colonial government not to be taken over by
true freedom fighters.
When
the Abagusii community ditched Ford People and Simeon Nyachae into political
oblivion in preference for Raila, they were in essence ridding from their midst
vestiges of colonialism and agents of economic and political exploitation in
exchange for progressive, pro-people politics espoused by Raila and other
social democrats in Kenya.
It
is this reality that Charles Nyachae is up against with the assistance of
former ruling party Kanu crown princess feared to be keen on rebuilding the old
socio-political and economic order in the country in which his father Mzee
Nyachae was a key player. The language of “communal unity” which the CIC boss
is reciting all over Gusiiland today is incidentally the language President
Uhuru Kenyatta and Ruto are reciting across the country at every public forum.
Interestingly,
at the height of Kanu dictatorship regional (tribal) chiefs (including Simeon
Nyachae), made this (communal unity song) their clarion call and often enforced
it through victimisation and brutalisation of opponents.
And
while their communities got together through this “forced communal inity”, the
tribal chiefs would resort to auctioning entire communities to State House for
personal and family favours which included lucrative business deals,
appointments of the individual auctioneer to the cabinet and additional
appointments of his family members, relatives and cronies to lucrative
government senior positions while the rest of the “controlled community”
members were abandoned to their devices as collateral damage.
Similarly,
talk across Gusiiland and into the diasporas is that the Nyachae family was
most notorious in the old Kanu politics of using and exploiting their community
while suppressing those independent enough to ask questions and those with
divergent views to the official line of the Kanu top command.
Many
are asking why this notion of “communal unity” as being re-engineered by
Charles Nyachae never benefitted the entire community or brought development
during those many years and why anybody believes it can be different today.
An
old retired political leader from Marani Hills (the cradle of the Abagusii
community) told this writer that Kisii people are much wiser and alert today
and may not allow themselves to be tricked back into an old fashioned
political trap of the discarded Nyachae family again. He added that Simeon
Nyachae was just lucky to have ridden on the colonial infrastructure and the
Kanu dictatorship which no longer exist to help his son re-invent the wheel.
Today, he added the community loves and cherishes democracy, freedom and
healthy competition and should not be dragged back into retrogressive politics.
Other
residents who talked to the press have counselled the CIC chairman to go slow
on his Jubilee project since it will flop.
According
to them, the syndrome of being close to the government to get development is
both a lie and an extremely unconstitutional position since all Kenyans are
entitled to development projects as properly planned by state and county
institutions and parliament in order of priority and availability of funds.
They
challenged Nyachae to quit his CIC job if he wants to join politics, a delicate
game he does not understand neither did his father and reminded him that in
diversity, Kisii people are working in harmony without a problem and that the
talk of disunity is the figment of his own imagination.
They
accused him of being incapable of serving the public good hence his disastrous
performance at the CIC where he has supervised over the mutilation of the
constitution instead of ensuring proper and full implementation.
In
anger, they are asking: - If he has no wisdom and capacity to set up a family
and home at 60 years of age, where does he get the wisdom to unite the
Abagusii? Who cheated him that Kisiis are not united? Whom does he want to
speak for? About What? For whose gains?
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