Nairobi County Governor Mike Sonko has compared the frustrations he is undergoing at the hands of senior officials at Harambee House to what President Uhuru Kenyatta underwent as the official leader of the opposition.
In a statement on his social media platforms on Wednesday, April 29, Sonko stated that Uhuru was frustrated by those in power at the time, unaware that he would one day become president.
"I have a message to some of my friends at Harambee House who are drunk with power. Power comes, power goes, power is temporary and transient but the will of the people, and the will of God, is eternal," he accused.
He revisited an incident that saw President Uhuru Kenyatta teargassed when he went to defend the rights of hawkers in the city who were clashing with the police.
Sometimes in 2006, there was a stand off between hawkers and @PoliceKE. The current President stepped in to help quell the crisis, but his efforts did not succeed. pic.twitter.com/23htp6xBEz
— Mike Sonko (@MikeSonko) April 28, 2020
He informed that the senior police officer in charge of the operation teargassed Kenyatta under instructions from his superiors at the Office of the President, unaware that Kenyatta would later become President.
"Sometimes in 2006, there was a standoff between hawkers and the Kenya Police. The current President stepped in to help quell the crisis, but his efforts did not succeed.
"Senior officers at the Office of the President directed the then Provincial Police Officer (PPO) to instruct his officers on the ground to disperse the hawkers and the then the leader of official opposition Uhuru Kenyatta by tear-gassing them.
"Nobody then knew that he [Uhuru] would one day become President," Sonko stated.
Sonko took the case of powerful Moi-era politician Nicholas Biwott as an example of the principle of transcience of power to warn those he considered his detractors.
He alluded to the fact that though Biwott had wielded power in his prime, he ended up dying, in his view, a lonely man after Moi retired, a matter that he wanted them to take heed of.
"In the '90s, Hon. Nicholas Biwott was a powerful man. Before his demise, he used to sit lonely at a corner at Serena Hotel. Few people bothered to say hi to him. Many others came before him and many others after him. But the Supreme Will of God has never faltered, neither floundered," Sonko warned.
The embattled Governor accused Interior PS Karanja Kibicho of using the police to intimidate and deter him from offering services to the people of Nairobi following the formation of the Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS).
Some of the activities Sonko had been championing were suspended by the government, including the county fumigation services, food distribution with some of the sanitization booths he had installed being destroyed.
