Attack on Raila Odinga was planned - Matiang'i

Interior CS Fred Matiang’i meets the National Assembly Committee on Administration and National Security on April 05, 2022. [David Njaaga, Standard]

Interior CS Fred Matiang'i told Members of Parliament (MP) on Tuesday that hostility meted out on Azimio la Umoja presidential flag bearer Raila Odinga, in Uasin Gishu, had been planned.

Appearing before the National Assembly Security and Administration of Justice Committee Matiangi told the members that 17 suspects had been arrested in connection with the attack.

The CS said the government believes the attack had been choreographed because the suspects were caught with lots of lose cash, in bundles of shillings 50 notes, in their pockets.

"It’s not coincidental that the suspects had so much money in the same denominations, and some of them were distributing it around that particular time,” the CS said. 

The Interior CS warned that perpetrators of political violence would face the full force of the law.

“There will be no sacred cows in the crackdown on perpetrators of political violence,” Matiang’i stated.

He further warned that rampant voter bribery and ‘rented crowds’ involving the ferrying of supporters to political functions was threatening peace and straining security resources.

“Politicians are spending money to pay youths and move huge groups of people and ferry others at night. This phenomenon of renting crowds and trying to posture for popularity or what you may call pretended populism is what is actually going to hurt us.”

Meanwhile police on Tuesday interviewed Suna East Mp Junet Mohammed and his Embakasi East counterpart Babu Owino as witnesses to the Friday chaotic incident at the funeral of prominent Uasin Gishu farmer Jackson Kibor.

Seventeen youths have already been arraigned in Eldoret after investigations roped them into the ugly fracas where a chopper that the Azimio la Umoja flagbearer Raila Odinga was being flown in was pelted with stones. The chopper’s windscreen was crashed in the chaos.