President Uhuru Kenyatta will skip Migori County during his tour of Nyanza region which is set to begin today.
The President is scheduled to visit the area alongside his deputy William Ruto but he has reportedly cancelled the trip due to sharp divisions among elders of the Kuria community who were scheduled to host him.
Reliable sources indicated that the tour had been cancelled after members of the Kikuyu Council of Elders and their counterparts from the Kuria community failed to agree on a few issues.
“There are serious and deeply-rooted clan politics in this region that must be ironed out before the President can come to Kuria,” a senior Government official said.
Kuria West Member of Parliament Mathias Robi, a Jubilee Party point-man in the region, claimed that the President's itinerary had been disrupted by the impromptu visit he made to Somalia on Saturday.
Robi indicated that the elders’ meeting was organised by only one clan, adding that he was not aware of it.
On January 19, Robi, who is a close ally of DP Ruto, was forced to flee after a charged crowd turned hostile just hours before Opposition Chief Raila Odinga was set to hold a rally at the same place.
Raila accused Ruto of trying to derail his rally on that day, forcing heavily armed security officers to come in and restore order.
Meanwhile, politicians from the Gusii Community have called for peace as the President visits the region to launch a number of development projects worth over Sh2 billion, saying they did not want a repeat of what happened in Mombasa County when Governor Hassan Joho was barred from attending the Mtongwe Ferry Channel Relaunch.
Kitutu Masaba MP Timothy Bosire recently warned Uhuru against intimidating residents in the Kisii region and has once again launched an attack at the head of state saying the visit is a mere act of public relations aimed at wooing voters.
He also added that most of the projects being launched are funded by International Organisations and the government had done very little during the past five years.
