News Analysis By Leo Odera Omolo In Kisumu City

TROUBLES are brewing within the powerful Luo Council of Elders on what appeared to the community’s loss of faith and confident in its leadership.

The Council is currently hit by a leadership row making its work, operation and performance as the custodian of cultural virtue and value of the community rather negative.

Members of the Luo community have all along been nursing the belief that the Council is the replacement of the defunct former powerful Luo Union East Africa, which ceased from existence in the early 1980 following the countrywide ban imposed in all tribal welfare organizations by the then KANU one party monolithic system under the stewardship of the retired President Daniel Arap Moi.

A recent Council meeting held at the Ofafa Memorial Hall within Kisumu City almost turned into a vote against the Council chairman Ker Meshack Riaga Ogalo. A group of leaders opposed to the chairman’s leadership had plotted for an impromptu and unscheduled election.

But the scheme had only flopped after Ogalo’s deputy Willis Otondi who is the preferred successor developed cold feet, changed his mind and pleased with the elders to follow the right procedure in removing the chairman.

Ogalo is facing multiple accusation including the alleged covertly working in cohort with powerful politicians from outside Luo community who are perceived to be the political enemies of the Prime Minister Raila Odinga not consulting the executive committee.

The chairman is said to have travelled to Tripoli,Libya to meet with President Muamor El-Gdhafi without the approval of the Council’s executive committee. He is also being accused of accepting a Matatu Nissan Van offered to the Council by President Gadhafi through Kamlesh Paul Patni of the Goldenberg fame who has of late unilaterally assumed the role of chairmanship and coordinator of all tribal Council of Elders in Kenya without consultations. The vehicle was out rightly rejected by the Council.

Other allegations against Ogalo include insubordination of a section of Luo MPs and thereby undermining their work at the constituency levels.

Ogalo, however came out strongly in his defense dismissing all the allegations as baseless saying all the decisions he has taken have been sanctioned by the executive committee of the Council. He blames a section of MPs for his problems. The meeting ended up in chaos.

Of late Ogalo has been branded to be working as a mole of top Rift Valley politicians whom he is allegedly inconstant communication.

The deputy chairman Willis Otondi said that another crucial meeting is planned to take places within the next two weeks.

Ogalo maintained that he has never taken any decision without involving the Council’s executive committee.

On May 6th, 2010 the Luo Council of Elders suffered another blow and set-back when a High Court Judge gave a judgment barring the group from operating as the owners and patrons of the Ofafa Memorial Hall pending the judicial review applied by the rival groups which claims to be the registered patron of all the defunct Luo Union of East Africa.

Justice J.R.Karanja dismissed the Luo Council of Elders application with costs to the defendant Henry Michael Ochieng Obiero, a tenant at the facility whose ownership has been subject to dispute between the Luo Coucil of Elders and a group of rivals claiming to have been the genuinely and duly registered patrons of all the property owned by the defunct Luo Union East Africa.

As the result of the order members of the Luo Council of Elders stand barred and their workers or agents stand barred from entering or making use of any part of the Ofafa Hall.

Other reports says that when the Prime Minister Raila Odinga in the company of the Lands Minster James Orengo visited Ofafa Memorial Hall three months ago and addressed the Council, he urged them to conduct elections so that they may restore the confident of members of the community.

The current Luo Council of Elders comprised non-elected members. Most of its present members were men and women previously associated with the late Jaramogi OLGINGA Odinga, and who his son Raila Odinga had inherited as loyalist supporters. But none had gone through the process of being elected from his or her local community. They were handpicked in Kisumu, mainly by the IODM supporters.

The Council is therefore seen as a wing of the ODM or serving the party as its pressure groups. Some of them are known to be relatives of the dead Odinga’s hard-core and died-hard supporters. While other consist of individuals who cannot even be elected as civic Councilors within their own community or be made to be members of local primary school committees in their own villages.

And for the Council to regain its lost glory, its members must go for grass root elections in their own local communities in order to be able to earn respect of the community. It is not a strange thing for someone to travel from the far flung of Luo-Nyanza such as Nyatike or Mbita to come to Kisumu and found that someone from his own villages, who is virtually unknown to the villagers is sitting in the Luo Council of Elders purporting torepresent his orher interest.

The Council need to be overhauled and made to be much of representatives than a bunch oif sycophants and political hirelings of the ODM..People have been puzzled and perplexed as to who is responsible of nominating such people to the Council, an organ which is supposed to be so supreme body within the community and required the representation of people of high reputation and image.

The current Council is suffering credibility crisis. Community members cannot differentiate its cultural role within the society and its active participation in sectarian ODM party politics. Its chairman has always seized every opportunity commenting on major political issues affecting Kenya as a nation, something which members view as being outside the Council of Elders mandate.

A two weeks visit to Southern Sudan by the twenty Council members is one of the issues which the community considered to be outside the Council mandated cultural functions. While the visit to Libyan President Muamor El-Gadhafi is considered by the community as a mission of belly-begging, which has ashamed the community.

Ends

ledooderaomolo@yahoo.com