How Kibwana spanked Makueni’s rebel MCA’s

Makueni Governor Kivutha has survived a gun attack, a contrived cash-crunch, impeachment but now has a new lease of political life.

On the morning of September 23, 2014, he walked into a chilling gunfire at the county assembly grounds.

“Kala kamundu niko kaa...athai (the small man is here, take him down)”, Kibwana recalls the County Assembly majority leader Francis Mutuku shouting in vernacular before the gunfire erupted.

The Assembly shootings marked the climax of bad blood between Kibwana and the MCAs over budgetary allocations. A shaken Kibwana later said the gunfire was an attempt on his life.

The vicious contest emanated from the governor’s refusal to approve Assembly budgetary allocations, as designed by the MCAs and which were way beyond the controller of budget ceilings.

One month later, the MCAs impeached the professor of law, citing, among other things, “incompetence”. When he stalled the impeachment through a court intervention, the MCA’s vowed to cripple him by all means including impeaching his executives.

For two years, Makueni became a case study on how not to run a county government as the shadow boxing over public funds escalated. As the MCAs, most of them from humble education backgrounds celebrated their short-lived victory, Kibwana engaged political ‘guerilla’ warfare that left them gasping.

Every day, Kibwana and his deputy Adelina Mwau would scour the breadth and width of Makueni County, educating the masses and exposing the MCAs as irredeemable gluttons who stood on the way of service delivery.

“The man is simply a genius. He would go to your ward and wananchi would lend him an ear. He would then narrate to them how MCAs were a greedy lot bent on misappropriating public funds at the expense of development. Soon we fell out of favour with the public,” said one MCA who requested not be named. Before long, the tide had changed and the hunter became the hunted. Most MCAs could not visit their wards fearing the wrath of the mwananchi. But how did the governor turn the tables on them?

“Kibwana and I have a civil society background. It was easy to connect with the masses and explain to them what was ailing our county; selfish political aggrandisement,” explained deputy governor Adelina Mwau.

Things moved swiftly and a team of residents filed a petition to dissolve the entire county government. Kibwana and his deputy were discreetly but forcefully behind this initiative which sent fear down the spines of the county legislators. They urged people to come out in large numbers and append their signature to the petition. In record time, over 150,000 voters had signed the petition to send the county government home.

“If a by-election was called at the time, very few of us would have survived the people’s wrath,” admitted the MCA. President Uhuru Kenyatta duly appointed a commission headed by Mohamed Nyaoga to look into the merit of the  petition. During the commission’s hearings at Wote Town between April and June 2015, the MCAs, evidently subdued, would fervently plead with the Commission not to recommend dissolution of the county government.

Curiously Mutuku, the Majority Leader, and House Speaker Stephen Ngelu told the Commission there was still room to reconcile and work together with the executive.

But Kibwana was resolute: “Dissolve the county government and let us all seek fresh mandate from the people,” the governor who had established himself as a defender of public resources told the Commission.

It was a huge relief for the MCAs when President Uhuru Kenyatta rejected the commission’s recommendation to suspend the county government and invoke fresh elections.

Since then, a lot of water has gone under the bridge. From being seen as a villain, Kibwana has become a darling of the people. “The governor succeeded in presenting himself as the protector of public resources. He took mwananchi as his number one agenda and this is how he managed to endear himself in the hearts of many,” says County Women Rep Rose Museo.

Museo adds that Kibwana’s humility and honesty played a big role at a time when the MCAs had ganged up with majority of the county MPs to bring him down.

“He is a very humane person and a good listener and has always involved the public in whatever projects the county government does,” notes Museo.