President Ruto announces plans to build Ksh.5B modern Gikomba Market
I have never liked William Ruto my entire life, as a matter of fact I have been one of his worst enemies that he would have wished dead a long time ago. Luckily for both of us we do not know each other personally and have no interest of being friends which is good.
The person I know personally in the Ruto camp is Isaac Ruto his buddy he put at JSC to get things there done for him. When I was the Secretary General of Students Organization of Nairobi University (SONU) it was a war in there. We were 25 members of the Students Representative Council (SRC) which made decisions by voting on what actions the student community would take in fighting the Moi dictatorship.
The chairman of SONU at that time was Comrade Titus Adungosi who was killed by President Moi in Kamiti Maximum Prison in 1988 after being jailed for six years. He died at Kamiti Maximum jail and nobody knows where they took his body.
He was my boss and we really respected him because he accepted every voting result from the SONU Students Representative Council even if he did not agree with it. He was the chairman of SONU at that critical time and he earned the respect of university students because he stood firm on what was good for the country.
Out of the 25 members of the SRC there were 13 progressive students against Moi like Oduor Ongw’en, David Murathe, myself as the SG and many others. The other 12 were Moi supporters but we had people like my good friend Shem Ochuodho who could vote either way.
The Moi supporters at SONU got the Deputy Chair job on Sonu and their guy was Isaac Ruto a well-known Moi spy on students at Nairobi University campus. Then one time we are putting anti Moi posters at campus for action and I am doing one on the main building and I look behind me and it was Isaac Ruto standing there and letting me know that he was heading to State House to report me.
I told my comrades we had been busted and Isaac Ruto had me with pictures and everything so we should take down the posters.
The comrades said no we are not taking down our posters against the Moi one party rule and we decided to go to the Students Recreation Centre because we knew if the Moi cops come in that is the first place they will go to. We figured if the Moi cops find us there they will arrest us and leave the students alone.
William Ruto was not my enemy at the University level struggles at both Nairobi and Kenyatta campuses because he came in a few years later. Isaac Ruto was the one whose job was to take us to hell and he did everything to make that happen. That is why I spent a total of 23 months in jail during my university education where I spent more time in jail than in campus. Somehow, I kind of passed the tests in campus and in jail too.
One thing in jail is you have to make sure you get some food and eat otherwise you are in trouble. You are going to be dead and they have a secret mass burial location in Kamiti. Don’t ask me because I know where it is and I am not talking. At least for now.
So that is my story with President William Ruto and he has killed some of our best patriots like Karimi Nduthu after whom my son is named. I will never shake his hands with Wiliam Ruto. He wouldn’t give a damn about that and that is fine for both of us.
However, there are certain things President Ruto is doing now that could transform our country to something we have always imagined about and never thought possible.
I will start with the deal by President Ruto to partner with Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja to put real money to take our capital city where it belongs and that is in the heavens. We know that that because there are so many things in our big city that the whole world wants and all they have to do is come to our city but we have a long way to get it where it should belong as a top world city.
If we look at our capital city which is Nairobi County, it is bigger than many countries in the world by population and GDP. That is an amazing thing, but the scary aspect is just the total wastefulness and disaster in the Nairobi City and County
President Ruto’s idea of working with Nairobi Governor and investing Sh. 80 billion to lift our capital city to the next level could be opportunistic thinking on his part but it has the potential to transform our national economy and that of Nairobi County to levels that are possible but unimaginable at the moment.
We have this great city and don’t tell me anything about that little photo of Nairobi City Hall now home to Sakaja, but the capacity of the county if reached economically could change our nation for the better.
This is how tall our city of Nairobi and our giraffes are and they live together in the same place called Nairobi City. There is nothing like that anywhere else in the world. That is how lucky we are as Kenyans.
There is simply no city like our beloved Nairobi in the world and that is wonderful, but we have to do better with our capital city and that is why some of the stuff President Ruto is talking about are at the heart of where we move as a country.
When we went to fight for devolution, I was at the Bomas Conference in 2003 and things were really tight. The perfect devolution idea that the likes of Raila Odinga came up and was supported by delegates from across the country was to turn every province into a county and have 8 counties in Kenya.
That would have enabled those counties to have real power for economic growth and national influence including having their own foreign trade deals with the rest of the world.
At Bomas Conference it was a nightmare because President Mwai Kibaki who was elected because he supported the new constitution and Raila Odinga had to fight like hell to get Kibaki to defeat Moi and his Uhuru project but after the elections Kibaki wanted to keep the Moi Katiba because it gave all the powers of governance to the president.
Even alleged Kenyan human rights activists like Kiraitu Murungi and Prof. Kivutha Kibwana who had been involved in the fight for a new constitution changed their tune after Kibaki took State House and put them in power
It was war at the Katiba Conference at Bomas and in the end the idea of 8 counties was replaced by having 47 counties which really are useless economically and are only eating points for the governors. I live in Canada which is the largest country in the world today and we have 8 provinces which are like their counties and they run everything on the ground.
If Canada was Kenya, they would have 690 provinces given the size of the country and they would all be useless.
The real story is that devolution has failed in Kenya because the counties are too small to really have any economic impact and make things better. Nairobi is a different story because it has the capacity and the resources to do really great things for the Nairobi residents and for the country.
But Nairobi consists of 10 different cities for those who live there ranging from the super-rich areas where some families occupy ten acres of prime land in the city with swimming pools and even ranches for their animals there.
Those are Muthaiga homes in Nairobi and when I was in police custody and I was told I was being moved to Muthaiga Police Station. I thought it was going to be a good place there, but what we found out it was very bad in there. My story at Muthaiga Police Station was really tough for me. I just came from Langata Police Station where the cops almost killed me by throwing me down the stairs and my head was blown up.
The police take me to this hospital and I wake up when the doctors were doing the surgery and I could hear them talking to the police officers there. The doctor tells the police that they were very happy that radical students like me were arrested. That made me thinking I need to jump out of there but I pretended I was still unconscious.
After my surgery I was taken to Muthaiga Police Station. Then some bad stuff happened in there. First of all, Muthaiga Police Station in the richest area of our country is the ugliest and most deplorable.
In fact, when I left the hospital with bandages all over my head somebody from the Weekly Review paper took a picture of me and that was really good because it was proof to my mother who was looking for me in every police station in Nairobi that I was actually alive.
Then we go to Muthaiga Police Station and one day they bring somebody in who was not one of us, but he was brought into the police cell. He had cigarettes when he was brough to the police station and that is not allowed. The guy was smart enough to dump his cigarettes in a box at the office so they did not know he had them.
Them he comes to the police cells and tells us he has cigarettes dumped somewhere in the police office. We figured it out and got the cigarettes to our cell and were smoking at night when the cops smelled it but they had no keys and could not open the door to beat the crap out of us.
The cops come in the morning ready to deal with us. We knew the first thing they would do was to smell our hands and they will say we smell of smoke. We had better plans. In the police cell you have a pail in the block to poo and pee there. It is always full of that smelly material.
So before the cops got in, we put our fingers and hands in the poo pail and they were throwing up after smelling our hands. We did not give a damn and that was my experience with the rich people Muthaiga area.
At the end of the day Nairobi is many different cities and I will start with Westgate Mall for rich folks. I used to go there and the first thing my son asked me was why there were so many police officers with guns at the mall. I told him to ignore them and also to realize that when real robbers come to the mall with guns the armed cops will be the first ones to run away.
Me and my friend Githuku used to go from his home in Maimuto in Kiambu going to Nairobi and I could not believe some of the buildings and homes I was seeing. Those homes for the wealthy in Nairobi are cities by themselves and their great malls.
Then you come to Kibra in the other side of Nairobi and it is as close to hell as you are going to get to get. It is just nuts in real life and millions of Kenyans live in those conditions. For how long, that is the question.
Those varying crazy pieces of Nairobi cannot co-exist if we want our country to survive and move forward and that is why President Ruto talking with Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja to find real solutions and put money into building the Nairobi and Kenyan economy could be a big game changer and I know ee talk about that all the time but this could be the real thing for once.
One thing about Kibera the original before I forget is how much fun I had there with my son when I took to Kenya for the first time in 2002 and he was five years old and his grandmother wanted to see him is that our buddy Githuku took us to an Eritrean Restaurant in Kibera because the young man mother is Eritrean.
Then at the restaurant where we were having great food a big police team comes in. The cops then go to talk to the manager and they claimed there were illegal Eritrean immigrants working at the restaurant. Githuku who is a photographer takes out his camera and secretly records the cops getting bribes from the restaurant owner. I almost grabbed the camera from my buddy because I was scared if the cops see that we were going to be in real trouble.
In any event, if William Ruto and Johnson Sakaja bring Nairobi to where it belongs by investing in the infrastructure and business in Nairobi it could change everything for the country and that will be great.
Inside President Ruto, Governor Sakaja’s Ksh.80B plan to fix Nairobi
On the financing mechanism, though the framework envisioned by President Ruto and Sakaja, a joint agreement for financing of all programmes will be worked out.
The parties shall jointly agree on the modalities for financing all programmes and projects undertaken pursuant to this agreement, including the sources of funding.
“The fiscal and operational framework of the county’s financing was not designed for a capital city of this scale and responsibility. Nairobi carries national, regional and global obligations, but is funded largely through the same formula as other counties,” said the President.
Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja added: “In the 13 years of devolution, Nairobi City County has not had the opportunity to benefit and leverage from its uniqueness as a capital city to get special attention to get support and resources for its people.”
The National Government is to inject additional Ksh.80 billion funding to Nairobi County under the new deal aimed at strengthening the performance of county functions, and improving service delivery to the capital city.
In the deal, a steering committee has been established to be chaired by Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi while Governor Sakaja will be the vice chair. The steering committee shall be meeting quarterly.
“This is not a transfer of functions…I have no interest in running Nairobi, let Sakaja and his people do their work,” President Ruto stated.
The deal signed Tuesday will see the National Government inject additional funding amounting to Ksh.80 billion, four times more than what it received in the current financial year.
“I was in Gikomba, and we are now designing a modern national market. I have given my undertaking that we are going to build a Ksh.5 billion modern market in Gikomba. This will strengthen Nairobi’s standing as a capital worthy of the republic it serves, orderly, functional, competitive, and globally respected,” the president stated.
One of the key pieces in the Ruto Sakaja deal is the rebuilding of our famous Gikomba Market in Nairobi because that is the heart of Nairobi City for regular folks who do not go to Two Rivers Mall.
I bring Gikomba market for two reasons and the first is that there is a reason that great market is consumed in fire every year. The Millionaires in Nairobi cannot believe that such prime land is for poor and regular folks to do business and they want it burnt down to the ground so they can take the whole place.
Governor Sakaja has announced that Nairobi County will give title deeds to those traders at Gikomba market and provide facilities like fire prevention and electricity at Gikomba Market. If William Ruto can help Sakaja to get Gikomba going for Nairobi folks that is a revolution in itself and it better be done.
The other reason I am talking about Gikomba is because I am a trader by nature. My sister who is pretty good economically was in a tough spot when I was in jail and I was the one who was supposed to help her get to college. She pulled it off herself and is big in business today and it all started with her doing business at Kibuye Market in Kisumu.
My sister became part of a big part of the business in producing and supplying school uniforms in her Siaya County. She likes what she is doing. But Kibuye Market is much bigger and I want to get into the Obambla market at Kibuye Market starting this week as a matter of fact. I don’t know how it will go but I am going there.
They say Kenyan economy need us to add value to local products. I am going to add value to Ngege fish from Lake Victoria by having 100’s sun dried fish ready for sale and cooking every day. That is next.
