Former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has alleged that some people in government are using criminals to manage politics.
Gachagua alleged that the fence-sitting by the government is a way of courting disaster.
The former DP made reference to an incident in Limuru
Thursday last week where he was forced to flee after suspected goons disrupted
a funeral he was attending.
Gachagua claimed the incident was an attempt on his life;
one he says was planned, starting with the withdrawal of his security.
He opined that unless the government moves hastily to arrest the
unbecoming trend, it bears all the elements of morphing into a dangerous
security threat akin to what was witnessed in the 90s.
“I want to caution the government to be very careful, when
loose criminals were brought in the 90s, they developed into something that was
very problematic. Rooting them out was a very painful and costly affair,”
Gachagua claimed.
The impeached ex-DP was speaking in an exclusive interview
with NTV aired on the night of Sunday, December 1.
Following the Limuru incident Gachagua cancelled his planned
appearance at a funeral in Molo and a church event in Pipeline, Nakuru.
“Whoever has sat down and decided that you want to engage these
criminal gangs to manage politics in the region, you are courting disaster and
you’re starting something that you cannot stop,” Gachagua alleged.
Kenya has in the past borne the brunt of proscribed criminal
gangs that wreaked havoc across the country, leaving a trail of destruction,
deaths and untold suffering to innocent Kenyans.
They include Mungiki, Chinkororo, Sungusungu, the Taliban,
Kosovo Boys, Kamjesh and the Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF).
Despite sustained clampdown by the state and proscribing the
groups, some of the gangs like Mungiki, a violent youth gang with an estimated
past membership of at least one million, are still in operation today and are
often used by some political players to suppress opponents.
Gachagua claimed that the government’s apparent inaction as a new
crop of criminal outfits emerge and take to disrupting events attended by
politicians is akin to condoning lawlessness.
“These gangs were there, they were introduced in the 1990s
during the clamour for multipartism to deal with those who were clamouring for a multi-party state. From what I was in Limuru and what had been organised in
Nakuru and in Molo, some people in government have sat down and decided that
they want to use criminal gangs to manage politics,” he claimed.
The former second-in-command alleged the destruction of leaders'
vehicles as was witnessed in Lmuru is meant to scare away vocal leaders from
attending public events as a way of stifling dissent.
Gachagua claimed if the trend is allowed to continue unabated,
the targeted leaders and members of the public might resort to self-defence and
organise gangs to counter the criminal gangs.
“In fact, the people of Limuru are saying had we known that
this gang was coming, they would have dealt with those characters. So we want
the state to take over security, secure all meetings, stop using criminal gangs
and arrest those characters because from social media, these characters are
clearly defined and people were even putting names to them because they know
them,” he alleged.
Despite this, Gachagua claimed that police have not arrested
any of the suspects but have instead resorted to harassing Kiambu Senator
Karungo Thang’wa.
He said the senator was also attacked during the Limuru
chaos and went to report the incident to the DCI but was not given an audience.
"They refused to listen to him, and at 10 pm at night they wrote
him a letter summoning him to go to Nyeri. The crime happened in Limuru in
Kiambu, they are asking him to go to Nyeri yet the local Member of Parliament John
Kiragu recorded a statement at DCI headquarters?” he claimed.
Thang'wa snubbed the summons in Nyeri, questioning why the
matter was being handled in a different jurisdiction.
Meanwhile, the Director of Criminal Investigations Mohamed Amin said police did not have prior Intel about the Limuru chaos.
