Controversy is Ngilu’s black twin sister

Kitui County is a likely to become a new hotbed in Kenya’s politics. As fate would have it, the creation of counties has thrown together two political arch-rivals and presidential hopefuls.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the two protagonists — Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, who has been on the road to re-energise his presidential bid, and Water minister Charity Ngilu, who keeps all and sundry guessing about her political moves — will have to face off to determine who will wield real political power in the county.

Although Mr Musyoka is not running for a county seat, it is apparent that he would like to see a county government in place that is sympathetic to his political ambitions.

What the future may look like became apparent a month ago when Mrs Ngilu was inspecting water projects across the county. At one point, in Mr Musyoka’s Mwingi North constituency, her security detail was involved in a fracas with the VP’s supporters who claimed they had been provoked.

Their accusation was that Mrs Ngilu did not have any kind words for Mr Musyoka in her addresses. Gunshots were fired in the ensuing melee, and several people were injured. One of the bullets punctured a matatu tyre. No one was arrested, and the circumstances of the disorder and the use of firearms are still hazy.

Firearms

But the battle for the county is unlikely to be limited to raw politics. There is a huge economic side to what promises to be a bruising duel. The exploitation of what is believed to be the largest coal deposits in the East African region will set the tone and pace of the fight for control of the local economy.

Mrs Ngilu is no stranger to political controversy. Early this year she was thought by friend and foe to be hanging by a thread as her political career took a beating from the scandals that ravaged her Water ministry. At one point, she even made a remark to suggest that if she had done any wrong “by supplying water to my people” then she was ready to bite the bullet.

“I almost declined my appointment to the Water docket in early 2008 because I knew it was a major political trap which could be used to fight me,” she told her constituents in the heat of the publicity the scandal attracted.

This time she is facing criticism from fellow leaders over a string of incidents that have characterised her recent confrontational public rallies in the region.

They accuse her of deliberately provoking the public and failing to restrain her supporters in a well- calculated political scheme to divide the Kamba community ahead of next year’s General Election.

Right from her days as an opposition MP to her current term in government as a Cabinet minister, Mrs Ngilu appears to run into controversy every so often.

Provincial administrators who served in Ukambani region when Mrs Ngilu joined politics had a rough time whenever they had to deal with her. Some of those who spoke to the Sunday Nation reminisced with mixed feelings about the run-ins they had with the minister before she joined government in 2003.
Assistant minister Asman Kamama was the DO in charge of Athi River division in the then Machakos District between 1996 and 1997 when Mrs Ngilu contested the Presidency.

Mr Kamama recalled an incident in 1997 when the combative MP attempted to forcibly free her women supporters from Athi River police station.

“As an administrator, the responsibility of maintaining law and order was squarely on my shoulders, and I had to stop her from gaining access to the police station,” Mr Kamama said. “I quickly mobilised policemen to stop her group and disperse them because we had prior information that she was to storm the police station to free her supporters from custody. I made sure they were arraigned in court.”

Now colleagues in Parliament and both ministers in the same government, Mr Kamama says he has a cordial working relationship with Mrs Ngilu, but he has never reminded her that he was the uniformed administrator whom she confronted then.

There was another incident in Kitui town on December 13, 1996, when the minister scuffled in public with a provincial administrator.
The then first term opposition MP and an outspoken critic of the government of former President Moi’s Kanu government had slapped Kitui Central District Officer Geoffrey Taragon in the face after the administrator broke up her demo.

Mr Taragon, now Samburu Central DC, recalled the embarrassing incident with sour memories but said he took it in his stride as a professional hazard. Mrs Ngilu was locked up alongside six others and later arraigned in a Kitui court on charges of assault and inciting people to disobey Government orders.

And there seems to be no end to her controversies.

The minister’s driver is facing campaign violence charges in a Kitui court over an incident last year in which Mutito MP Kiema Kilonzo’s younger brother was assaulted during the referendum campaigns.Lumumba Kilonzo, the MP’s brother, recently testified in the case blaming the minister for the incident in which he was beaten up and his mobile phones stolen.

But the most outstanding incident involved the beating of Kitui mayor Mwendwa Munywoki by rowdy youths. A gang of youths assaulted him as he addressed a rally at Katulani market in Mrs Ngilu’s presence.

Nor have journalists been spared. Mr Paul Mutua, The Standard Correspondent for Kitui County, suffered a fractured hand and his camera was damaged in a similar attack by youths.
Local leaders want Mrs Ngilu held responsible for the attacks and for failing to restrain her supporters from causing mayhem.
“No one is above the law; beating up the mayor in public was the highest violation of the law and disrespect to authority,” assistant minister David Musila said, adding that such impunity should never be tolerated.

However, the minister denies being responsible for the violence and instead blames unnamed rivals for instigating the chaos to portray her in bad light.
Mrs Ngilu’s political aide, Alex Ng’ang’a, told the Sunday Nation: “Her detractors are sponsoring the violence to scare away people from attending the minister’s rallies and to portray her as a violent leader.”

Former Cabinet minister Kivutha Kibwana, who is President Kibaki’s adviser on constitutional matters, says the recent violence was part of a wider scheme to portray the Kamba community as divided and spoil election chances for Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka.
That aside, the Water minister says her two-decade journey in elective politics, which began in 1992, was inspired by the fact that women in Kenya, despite their strength in numbers, were weak and voiceless in a male dominated society.

In 1997, she went down in the country’s history as the first woman to seek the presidency. And in a packed field of male contenders, Mrs Ngilu managed an impressive fifth position.

Even after her Cabinet appointment in 2003, Mrs Ngilu remained controversial in her remarks, often accusing the Narc government of failing the Kenyan people, and losing sight of its original vision for the country.
She once described the Kibaki government, of which she was a part, as “a bunch of looters who do not have the people’s interests at heart”, and called on the electorate to vote them out in the 2007 General Election.

At one point, police detained the minister for 10 hours after she stormed the Central police station dramatically freeing rights activist Ann Njogu, who had been arrested for protesting against a proposed pay increase for MPs.

Stormed station
However, her critics view her as a flip-flopper who could not decide whether she was in the Kibaki administration between 2003 and 2007 or against the government.

Mrs Ngilu announced her support for ODM and its presidential candidate Raila Odinga in the 2007 General Election but refused to resign despite backing President Kibaki’s main rival.

In the heat of the campaigns, Mrs Ngilu attended an ODM rally riding in her official car complete with a ministerial flag.
Later she was fired.

A fortnight ago, the Water minister shared a platform with leaders from the PNU wing of the Grand Coalition Government — Mr Musyoka and Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta — on two occasions in Kitui County.
At one event, Mrs Ngilu, whose party is Narc, said that she was only a friend of the Orange Democratic Movement — a statement that left many wondering what her next political move would be come next year.