Writes Arrum-Tidi Ogonglo in Mbita Town.

A cross section of leaders in Suba region of Homa-Bay County on Monday stayed away from a function which was attended by the Prime Minister Raila Odinga at the make-shift newly established home of the nominated MP Millie Odhiambo in Lambwe Valley .

An account by an eye witness indicated that even the area MP Gerald Otieno Kajwang’ was nowhere to be seen at the function despite of the fat that the Prime Minister was visiting his constituency.

Instead Kajwang’and other local dignitaries had assembled at Magunga district headquarters in Gwassi where they were all waiting to received the PM. Also nowhere to be seen at the function were members of the powerful Suba Council of Elders and Luo Council of Elders whose vice chairman Ex-Senior Chief Omolo-Anditi hails from Mbita constituency.

The nominated MP Millie Odhiambo’s home is in Rusinga Island, but she is married to a Zimbabwean man. And for the purpose of winning the Mbita parliamentary seat during the impending general election she had decided to establish a home within the localty for the purpose of attracting votes.

According to Luo tradition and culture a woman who is married into another community outside her home region is called “Migogo” therefore a woman who is classified as ‘Migogo” has no right to come back to her home of origin and claim political leadership once she is already married into another community. She and her siblings are considered as outsiders and foreigners

For such a woman to come back home and demand the right to contest the election for political leadership is viewed as an insult and total disrespect to her people, particularly her cousins in Waware sub-clan in Rusinga Island Therefore Milie Odhiambo has a daunting task to convince the voters in Mbita to vote for her parliamentary bid. This would be an up-hill task, hence the reason for her hurriedly invitation to Raila Odinga into her make-shift home.

The idea of her building a new home in Lambwe Valley within Mbita constituency so as to dupe the electorate did not go down well with the local politicians who are competing with her for the same seat. He is being treated as foreigners with many claims that even in Zimbabwe there is a parliament there, and that the place where she should go and contest for a parliamentary the election there. It is Zimbabwe where she belongs to and not Mibita, said a civic leader in Mbita town.

Raila flew to Lambwe on Monday morning, and according to some account given by sources presence at the venue, the Prime Minister was accompanied by his wife Mrs Ida Odinga, but she is said to have refused to disembark and remained inside the chopper.

After a brief stop-over the PM resumed his flight to Magunga in Gwassi where he was given n arousing welcome by all the Sub region leaders. But Raila arrived there when the word had already reached the local Suba leader’s of the refusal of his wife Mrs Ida Odinga refusal to into a make-shift home of Millie Odhiambo.

A number of the elders interviewed heaped a lot of praise to Mrs Ida Odinga saying that by the Prime Minister visiting the make-shift home of the nomination MP he had stooped low and that in according to the norms, tradition and cultural virtues of the Luos the Prime Minister should have only gone thereto open a new house and not to grace the empty ground for political mileage.

Ms Odhiambo earned an accusation of misusing Raila to intimidate and bull-dose her opponents in the Mbita contest.

Such a make-shift home is called “Ligala” in the Luo vernacular and it is not a place worth a visit by a person of Raila Odinga caliber and status.

Milllie Odhiambo is a staunch supporter of the Prime Minister, but the visit to her still a bush site where she intended to put up her permanent home in the future world not augur well with the four other ODM members who are locked up in the stiffest election battle with Millie Odhiambo.

The ODM boss who has repeatedly said that this time around nobody would enjoy his political patronage during the forthcoming general election an each and every aspirant must get prepared to sort out his or her problems with the voters is viewed as having gone to Lambwe to offer the biased support toms Odhiambo. In the opposite Millie Odhiambo might have have hatched an idea of inviting the Prime Minister into the site of her still bush home for the purpose of intimidating her opponents in the Mbita seat contest.

The issue is likely to impact negatively and adversely during her election campaign because her rivals have said they will use the visit as an attempt to intimidate and scare them away that she is too powerful and invisible.

“Whoever had invited the Prime Minister to that function had the ulterior motive to reduce his status.’,said one Suba elder who scathingly criticized the PM’s handlers for the incident.

Ends