Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho was Thursday evening forced to cut short his speech during the official opening of the Aldina-Jomvu carbro access road.
Two rival groups supporting aspirants for the Jomvu parliamentary seat started heckling Mr Joho and chanting and singing praises for their men.
The rival groups supporting Jomvu Ward Representative Karisa Nzai clashed with those backing incumbent Jomvu MP Badi Twalib.
“This time round, it seems like Jomvu will be hot. Let me finish my speech and you can continue with whatever you are doing,” Governor Joho pleaded with the heckling youths.
However, his pleas fell on deaf ears.
“Okay, I will give you time to heckle and when you are done, please tell me so that I may finish my speech,” he told the youths, but that did not deter them from shouting as their masters sat there grinning.
Later, when they had maintained peace for about five minutes, Mr Joho resumed his speech, urging Mombasa residents to go to Fr Gabriel Dolan, the leader of a community-based organisation, and tell him not to stop his projects by going to court.
COURT INJUNCTIONS
Governor Joho said some organisations had a tendency of stopping his projects through courts by getting injunctions.
The governor warned the residents to be wary of such organisations, saying they were against development.
He said he had started constructing the Bangladesh-Mikindani access road but it was stopped by Fr Dolan.
“I am sending you to Fr Dolan. When I started these projects, I started with Bangladesh to Mikindani but my friend Fr Dolan took us to court and stopped the project. By now we could have had that road connecting to other areas,” he said.
“You cannot say you run a community-based organisation and that you have the people’s will but you always stop developments meant to help the people,” he told Fr Dolan.
Fr Dolan is a missionary who has worked across the country, including in Kitale, Turkana and Mombasa, where he is currently based.
Three organisations are in court seeking to stop the Mombasa County government from launching a multibillion-shilling housing project.
The county intends to provide more than 30,000 housing units to residents as part of its Sh200 billion Vision 2035 mega projects. Twelve estates will be demolished in the process to make way for new houses.
However, the Legal Advice Centre, Haki Yetu St Patrick’s and Transparency International-Kenya accuse county officials of making unilateral decisions.
-nation.co.ke
