ALEGO-USONGA CONSTITUENCY APPEARS TO BE SLIDING BACKWARDS, AS FAR AS RURAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONSTITUENCIES INSIDE LUO-NYANZA ARE CONCERNED.
The Political Profile of Alego-Usonga Constituency, By Leo Odera Omolo In Kisumu City.
Once considered as one of the most advanced parts of Luo-Nyanza region, Alego-Usonga constituency seems to be sliding backwards, due to what the residents describe as poor political leadership and lack of motivation.
During colonial rule in Kenya, the area produced the top class civil servants, primary and high school teachers, clerical officers in both public and private sectors, doctors, engineers and many experts in various fields and professionals.
It produced traditional Nyatiti Luo Musicians and even excellent soccer players, like Otieno Kepher, Otieno Orocho, Kenya’s finest goalkeeper of the 1950s Stephen Ochieng, clerics like the late Canon Ezekiel Apindi, a pioneer Anglican priest who founded both Ng’iya and Pe-Hill Anglican Missions in both Central and Southern Nyanza regions.
Alego-Usonga produced one of the black African top police sleuths, who rose through the ranks to become the second African director of CID in Independent Kenya, the late Peter Okola. Okola was one of only three finest police officers in post independent Africa, who was among the first black men to be promoted to the rank of sub-inspector, and later full Inspector in 1939.
The signs that the constituency is sliding backward became apparent during the ODM branches conference, which was held at Homa-Bay two weeks ago, and which was chaired by the party leader Raila Odinga.
Alego-Usonga sent three sets of delegations opposed to each other, who travelled in five big Nissan Matatu to Homa-Bay. One delegation was representing the branch which is allied to the area MP, Edwin Ochieng’ Yinda. The second delegation was led by Siaya business magnate, and a former Town’s Mayor, Mr Orwenjo-Umidha, and the third delegation was led by one Francis Odhiambo. All the three delegations claimed to have been duly elected and registered as branch officials at the party’s headquarters based at Orange House in Nairobi.
The Alego-Usonga MP, Edwin Ochieng’Yinda, who was present at the Homa-Bay ODM branches conference in Nyanza, that brought together close to 1000 delegates from all Luo-Nyanza, appeared not to be bothered by this pathetic scenario of events. All the three sets of delegations demanded for admission and were all accommodated into the conference hall, to the chagrins of other branches.
Yinda seemed neither bothered nor ashamed of the unbecoming scenario. But it was a good pointer to the direction to which the politics of Alego-Usonga is presently heading to.
Alego-Usonga is currently represented in Parliament by one of the richest Luo personalities in the region, and even in Kenya as a whole, but locally, the constituency is poorly managed in terms of economic development and infrastructures. All the feeder and access roads across this expansive rural constituency are impassable, especially during the rainy seasons, when the red soil becomes so muddy. According to the locals, the recent Elnino rains washed away most of the bridges on the small streams, and this has made travelling across the constituency very difficult for the locals.
During the dry seasons, Siaya Township becomes so dusty. Due to poor state of roads, the only mode of reliable transport is by motor-bike taxis. But even these hard-core motor bike riders at times refuse to take passengers on certain roads, or they charges double, due to poor state of the road.
The major road that leads out of Siaya Town via Ndere, Boro and headed to Uranga Nyadorerra is poorly maintained, dusty, full of one to two feet deep pot-holes, and washed away murrums. Indeed, these areas need all whether murrum roads.
The devolving funds given to every constituency by the government appear not to have been disbursed well in this constituency, taking into account many small bridges that were recently washed away by the El-Nino rains have not been replaced, which is some of the areas where the funds should be used.
Alego-Usonga MP is rarely seen in the constituency, because he is living in Mombasa, where he is running and managing a chain of multi-million shillings businesses. He is being accused by his electorate of telling off those demanding for his frequent visit to the constituency. He has been heard frequently bragging that he spent a lot of money during his campaign for the seat in 2007, dishing out cash to the voters. As such, they have no business asking him to be around the constituency.
Yinda is on record as the only Luo MP in the 10th Parliament who went public in rejecting and severely criticizing the list of cabinet appointment made by President Kibaki and the Prime Minister, during the formation of the grand coalition government. He particularly criticized Raila, claiming the PM did not consult widely with the ODM MPs as required.
He is seen therefore as not being in good books with the Prime Minister, though he has on several occasions denied there exists any friction between him and “Agwambo”. But the locals acknowledge that he is an independent minded politician.
Residents also accuse their MP for having hand-picked members of the CDF, School Bursary and road maintenance funds, filling them with semi-illiterate individuals, with no knowledge of government accounting system. As such, the disbursement of funds has been so poor to an extent that many people do not even know whether such funds exist for real or just in the paper work. There is not even one single project that benefits the electorate, which Yinda can count put his name on.
Alego-Usonga in fact looks like an isolated island, a place not covered by the government devolving funds at all.
It is even worse, and sad, that the constituency is surrounded by three other parliamentary constituencies where the tempo of development is so competitively being done. These are Bondo in the west, Gem in the East, and Ugenya in the north. It has a small borderline with Budalangi, along the Rwambwa area. In all the three surrounding constituencies, the MPs, namely Dr. Oburu Oginga{Bondo], Jakoyo Midiwo {Gem}, and James (Nyatieng’) Aggrey Orengo [Ugenya } are working round the clock, and competing for development activities in their respective constituencies. Whereas the case Alego-Usonga, each time Yinda is around the constituency, he is surrounded by political goons at his Ng’iya Home, and usually has no time, even forr the elite in Alego-Usonga.
Alego-Usonga constituency was created in 1963, and its first elected MP was a former police officer turned journalist, the late Luke Rarieya Obok, whose originality was said to have been from Sakwa, Bondo, but was planted by the late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga to become the MP for Alego-Usonga on a KANU ticket in 1963. The late Luke Obok was a confidant of the late Jaramogi, though the two parted the companies in later years, when the late Obok joined the retired President Daniel Arap Moi, and served the KANU government as chairman of various parastatal organizations.
Obok was detained by the KANU government, headed by the late President Jomo Kenyatta, along with other KPU MPs in October 1969, following the disturbances in Kisumu, which resulted in the massacre of close to 27 people, most of them from gun shots fired by police and members of the Presidential Escort, and MPs and cabinet ministers from Central province. Kenyatta had gone to Kisumu to open the New Nyanza General Hospital (Russia) when the Kenyatta convoy and entourage was stoned by the angry crowd, blaming Kenyatta for the political assassination of Tom Mboya.
In the general election that followed in December of the same year, the late Peter Okudo, a former member for Alego-Usonga in the now defunct Nyanza Regional Assembly clinched the seat on a KANU ticket.
Okudo is credited for having initiated a lot of development between 1969 and 1964. He hails from the minority Usonga community in Uranga Division. Okudo, however, lost his seat to a former Nairobi Polytechnic lecturer, Peter Castro Oloo Aringo in 1964. The latter went on winning a series of elections thereafter.
Oloo Aringo represented Alego-Usonga for a total of 22 year, and his representation was only interrupted in 1972, when a former Editor of the East African Standard, and a confidant of Raila Odinga , Mr. Otieno Makonyango won the seat on a Ford-Kenya ticket, beating Oloo Aringo hands down.
But just like Yinda, Oloo-Aringo had one of the poorest track records of development in Alego-Usonga, despite having served in the cabinet as a Minister for Information, Narural Resources and Education for close to 13 years. He was at one time one of the most powerful politicians during KANU rule, when he served as the party National Chairman.
It later emerged that Oloo Aringo , who hails from the Jo-Kakan, the largest and dominant sub-clan, used the numeracy of his clan to stay afloat in Parliament for close to 22 years. But he left no trail of any tangible development. He was always sure of getting re-elected, but politics of clannish was later smashed with the advent of pluralism system of politics. Oloo Aringo bounced back in 1997, but lost again in 2002 when the youthful Sammy Weya, who also hails from Jo-Kakan won the seat. And in 2007, Edwin Ochieng’Yinda, who for many years had become a perennial parliamentary election loser in Alego-Usonga, finally won the seat, even as he was shrouded under suspicions and protests that he was still a KANU loyalist and a mole in ODM.
Yinda beat the high profile aspirants like Prof. Jackline Oduol and a prominent Kisumu hotelier, Mr. Charles Odunga Mamba, who were then the favorites of the ODM members within the constituency. He is believed to have parted with a fortune that enabled him to overcome his opponents.
Yinda, however, seems to be a one term MP, as the strong opposition against him is mounting all over the constituency. He hails from the minority Ka-Mululu, within Mur sub-clans. His disappearance from the eyes of the electorate soon after clinching the seat, and making only cosmetic appearances in Siaya, whenever there is elections within the County and Municipality bodies, are unlikely to persuade the electorate or the ODM party to give him another chance.
Alego-Usonga country-side is an agriculturally rich area. The Dominion Farm Limited is currently encouraging cotton farmers to redouble their efforts, and the company has revived the nearby Ndere Ginnery. This company is paying handsomely for the cotton delivered, and it is also about to establish its own ginnery within its own compound at the Yala Swamp.
Dominion Farms Limited, owned by an American business magnate, Calvin Burgess, is also encouraging the farmers to expand to bee keeping, as it has established a honey refining plant at the Yala River plant. But all these require political patronage and encouragement at a parliamentary representation levels, something that Yinda has failed at miserably.
Alego-Usonga is conducive for production of cash crops, and for domestic food grains, though like any other areas along the shoreline of Lake Victoria, the rainfall at time is unpredictable, and falls short of, or way above the farmers expectation. But crops like maize, sorghum, bananas, cassavas, ground-nuts, vegetables are doing well in the area most of the time.
Alego-Usonga constituency regained some of its lost old glory when President Barack Hussein Obama Jr. won the US presidency, and the area became instantly famous, and well known globally. President Obama’s family tree lineage is from a small village located in the southeastern part of the expansive Alego region. The place is called Nyang’oma village in Kogelo sub-clan. It has since become the centre of attraction for thousands of tourists visiting Western Kenya from the US and other parts of the world.
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