Senator Nyamu, trader clash over unpaid hotel bill

Nominated Senator Karen Nyamu. [File, Standard]

A businessman in Nairobi and Nominated Senator Karen Nyamu are caught up in a nasty exchange over an unsettled Sh29,850 hotel bill.

The Senator admits she has deliberately refused to pay the bill because Dickens Odhiambo, popularly known as Kamau wa Kisumu, tarnished her name.

Odhiambo says he has known Nyamu since he was among the youths who were mobilised by UDA politicians to State House last year for an empowerment programme where some of them were handed over motorcycles but he was left out.

This is said to have caused friction between the two after Odhiambo announced on social media that visiting State House was a waste of time after failing to get a motorcycle.

But the Senator has been vocal that Odhiambo was among the beneficiaries of the said motorcycles.

Around that time, Odhiambo was gifted a motorcycle by Thika-based Bishop John CW. "I was touched when I saw a video of him auctioning a kidney. I wondered why a man would go to that extent after being duped, yet supporting the needy is part of what we do," said the pastor.

"I considered surprising him with a motorcycle going for about Sh158,000, which I bought in Thika and we have the receipts and all the details; it's registered in his name."

On May 27, during Eid al Adha, Senator Nyamu, in the company of her supporters, showed up at Odhiambo's eatery near Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital and ordered food and soft drinks.  

"That day she was going around the neighbourhood to gift some people since it was a holiday and when she arrived at my eatery, she told her supporters to eat promising to settle the bill," Odhiambo claims 

Odhiambo claims he sent the Mpesa number to the politician and raised the matter at Bunge la Mwanachi in Jacaranda.

In response, through a social media video, Senator Nyamu said she would not pay because Odhiambo tarnished her name when he claimed he did not receive a boda boda after State House.

"That was the only way I could revenge for the things you did, going around tarnishing my name and that of the President, in fact, the bill is less than Sh3,000."