Jubilee orchestrated Unga shortage to manipulate voters – Raila

National Super Alliance (NASA) presidential candidate Raila Odinga has accused Jubilee administration of politicising the maize shortage issue and incompetence in dealing with the crisis that he says is gnawing Kenyans.

Odinga, who was speaking on Sunday, June 18 at his Karen home, says the government’s subsidized Ksh90-per-2kg packet has been distributed unevenly to specific areas, leaving 60% of Kenyans to suffer at the hands of a failed administration.

Odinga is accusing the President Uhuru Kenyatta-led government of deliberately orchestrating the current unga shortage, to starve Kenyans into desperation, submission and surrender.

“Jubilee is withholding its services with a view to procuring and supplying food in the final weeks to the August 8 elections so that relief food can be used as a tool to buy support as used to be done in KANU days,” said Odinga, who is the ODM party leader.

On June 7, the opposition coalition, NASA, had specifically asked President Kenyatta to fly to the neighboring Ethiopia and liaise with the authorities to sell maize to Kenyans, with the former prime minister now lamenting that the government did not heed to their advice therefore showing Jubilee has a political purpose.

“We also asked the President to fire the CS and PS of Agriculture and the CS of Devolution and Planning for deliberately misleading Kenyans on the famine situation. We called for a commission to inquire into the present food shortage with a view to ascertaining and reporting on the causes, and to make recommendations to prevent recurrence. Nothing has happened,” added Odinga.

NASA is now faulting the National Intelligence Service (NIS) and county commissioners for misleading the president on the unga crisis situation in the country, when they are the agencies supposed to advise him on the matter on a daily basis.

“Large maize millers, who control only 40 per cent of the unga market, were allocated 90 per cent of the subsidized maize in the strategic reserves. The small scale, local millers and posho mills who command over 60 per cent of the UNGA market have been given no allocation at all to date. Yet the president has the courage to ask why there is no UNGA in the counties. It is all crocodile tears,” lamented Mr. Odinga.

Earlier this year the president declared drought that had affected 23 arid and semi arid counties and other areas a national disaster, calling upon all stakeholders to support the government by up-scaling drought mitigation programmes.

But according to the opposition chief, donor and partners had responded by giving aids but because the Jubilee administration refused calls by the well-wishers to provide information of how much the government received of the appeal, they stopped their support to Kenyans.

Raila Odinga now wants the government to assure local farmers that they will buy their imported maize a good price, as no farmer will want to invest billions on importing maize when they are not sure of the market.