Writes Leo Odera Omolo In Kisumu City.
The Interim Electoral and Boundaries Commission will face the toughest questions when it visited Kisumu to collect the public views of the realignment of new County Wards and Parliamentary constituencies.
Top on the agenda among the dozens of issues to be resolved is the question of the administrative and political representation at both parliamentary level of the residents of Kadibo Division, which for many years was part of the larger West Kano Location.
Administratively, the entire Kadibo Division is currently being falling under Kisumu district, while in political representation, the area I included in Nyando constituency causing a lot of inconveniences to he residents.
The political history of this region is the most intriguing. A whole Winam parliamentary constituency, which has been in existence ever since independence in 1963 was scrapped under a very suspicious and controversial circumstances in the 1980s under the Boundaries Review Commission headed by the former Minister of State for Foreign Affairs James Paul Nyamweya who was also first MP for Nyaribari constituency in Kisii.
The residents had staked their hopes that the Ligale led Boundary Commission which had created close to 80 new additional parliamentary constituencies would have taken a keen look into the issue and the historical background the matter, and perhaps revived or restored the lost Winam constituency, which had disappeared in controversial circumstance during he representation of the late Dr Robert John Ouko and the former Kisumu Rural MP Wilson Ndolo-Ayah, but the Ligale Commission failed to readjust and restore the lost Winam Constituency to the chagrins of the residents.
In1962, shortly before Kenya attained its political independence, the Colonial Office in London had appointed the high profile Boundaries Commission, which was headed by one Prof.Mackenzie. This was the Commission which created most of the current parliamentary electoral constituencies in Kenya. It crated Winam Constituency in Kisumu district. The constituency then covered the entire Kolwa Locations, Miwani and Kibos sugar cane farming Locations, Kajulu Location and a number of Peri-Urban areas of Kisumu Municipality such as Dunga, Pand-Pieri, Nyamasaria, and Manyatta.
In the first general elections, which ushered the independence and which a held in June 1963, the first Winam Constituency was the late Mr Otieno Oyoo {Rayier} who had a seat on a KANU ticket and became the first MP for the area. However, Otieno Oyoo perished in a grisly road accident which occurred when his car rolled several times while he was driving home from Kisumu Town in the late evening hours. The mishap occurred between Nyamasaria and his rural home in Kobura village near Rabuor on the main Kisumu-Ahero-Kericho highway shortly and within only two months after taking his parliamentary oath.
In the consequent by-election that followed, the former Market Mater at the Kisumu Jubilee Market
L.W.Oselu-Nyalick, a resident of Kolwa, was voted in on a KANU ticket as Oyoo replacement. Nyalick successfully defended his seat in 1969, but was later dethroned by the former General Secretary of the Kenya Civil Servant Union, Geoffrey Onyulo, from Kajulu in 1974. Nyalich bounced back and recaptured the seat in 1979. He had also served as an Assistant Minister for Local Government and at one time acted as the Mayor of Mombasa Municipality when its Council was dissolved by the government an replaced by a Commission.
The three decades old parliamentary constituency was suddenly and mysteriously scrapped when the boundaries of Kisumu Mincipality were expanded to ten miles radius during the reign of he late Robert John Ouko as the MP for Kisumu Town sparking off a series of protests by other MPs like Ojwang’ K’Ombudo {Nyakach} Peter Anyumba {Nyando} and Onyango Ayoki {Kisumu Rurak}. The three MPs were rounded up and briefly locked in at the various police stations. The three MPs were later released from the police custody without any criminal charges being preferred against them an that how the Winam Parliamentary constituency evaporated and disappeared from the Kenya map and political landscape and history without trace.
Ouko who was then a senior member of the cabinet in the Moi’s authoritatarian KANU regime was hell-bent to ensure that the resident of Kolwa location, who were his uncles were included in Kisumu Town Constituency by hook and crock for the purpose of securing the safety of his uncles votes. To perpetuate of his continued influence in the local political derby Ouko was the one who I blamed for having killed the Winam Constituency.
It has now placed the residents of Nyando and Kisumu Toown East constituencies in a political dilemma where the residents of the populous Kadibo Division are politically in Nyando but administratively being administered by Kisumu district.
According to the US based Orieno Wagah who is an aspirant for Nyando parliamentary contest the impending general election, the residents are experiencing a lot of difficulties, especially the youths looking for the new generation national identity cards and those who seeking government employment. They are being made to shuttle around between Awasi the Nyando district headquarters and Kisumu D.C’s offices without successes.
The situation was even made worse during the reign of Peter Otieno Raburu as the Nyanza P.C. Raburu himself is a resident of Kadibo Division but for unknown reasons he had engineered the transfer of the entire Kadibo Division from Nyando to Kisumu district and separated its residents politically from their kith and kin in Nyando district. This new arrangement has had serious political and administrative repercussions to the residents, especially in connections to the disbursement of the government devolving funds such as CDF, Road Maintenance and Bursary Funds.
Otieno Wagah has called upon the government to urgently move with speed to harmonize the burning issue and ensure that the current IEBC restore and revive the Winam constituency ad that the resident of Kadibo rejoin their fellow Kano people in Nyando both administratively and politically .And so did Ouko himself followed the suit!!
Ends