Online and Physical Threats Made to Demonstrators as County Chief Officer Bribes Gen Z Coordinators to Scuttle Plans for “Greetings” to Be Delivered to Absent Gov. Ayacko
By THEDISPATCH.DIGITAL REPORTER
A plan by Migori County Gen Z to expose corruption in the county government led by Governor Ochilo Ayacko and hold him to account was thwarted when a number of Gen Z activists were allegedly bribed with Ksh 20,000 each early Tuesday to stop their activism. A poster that had been put up in a Facebook group calling attention to the alleged corruption of senior County Government officials was also pulled down after it had been shared in a few other groups.
According to sources that spoke to THEDISPATCH.DIGITAL on Tuesday evening, the exposure of wanton corruption in the county government has been systematically silenced through threats, physical violence on whistleblowers, online blogging campaigns to paint a clean image of the County Government, and bribery. The sources revealed that the corruption benefits the Governor and a few top officials, while most officers are left out in the cold to find their own means, although demands to contribute to the Governor’s harambees are always made.
The governor has centralized financial decisions and procurement in the hands of a few of his relatives and trusted allies he has worked with for years. One of these allies is Maurice Odhiambo Oindo, who was at one time his PA and later CDF manager when he represented Rongo Constituency as MP. To cement his position and gain control over the money in Migori, Oindo was appointed County Revenue Director, in charge of all locally collected revenue, dubbed own source revenue, and decides how much is banked and what is shared among the top officials connected to revenue collection.
For more control, Ayacko appointed an old friend and financier, one Dr. Achuora, as the Chief Officer Finance while an in-law, Maurice Otunga, was appointed CECM for Finance and Planning.
“In Migori, it’s not about service delivery,” says Mike Ogolla, a resident of Awendo. “It’s about Ayacko and his people making as much money as possible and getting re-elected in 2027. Ayacko believes that even if he doesn’t deliver, he will be re-elected for as long as he has Raila (Odinga) and money on his side. He thinks that’s why he lost in 2017 – he had no money but he cannot lose in 2027 if he has money to give ODM and buy local votes. So his people are collecting money for him and themselves, they’re not working for Migori.”
On Monday and Tuesday, bloggers associated with Ayacko made spirited attempts to regulate the protests in Migori, threatening protestors and at the same time urging them to stay away from County Government offices.
In the poster titled “Face of Corruption in Migori County,” the youth say that as Gen Z “we rise against massive corruption in Migori County” and then list five issues of alleged corruption. The issues are:
- Sabotaging payment of contractors
- Taking bribes from contractors (30%). Those that cannot pay the bribes have their payments deferred to become pending bills, never to be paid
- Mismanagement of County bursary
- Mismanagement of health facilities and stalling of drugs
- Amassing of wealth within a short time
Interestingly, Dr. Oscar Olima Obondo, the Migori County Secretary who ran Ayacko’s campaigns in 2017 and 2022 but was pushed aside after his victory and swearing in, does not feature in the corruption allegations. Word in Migori is that the CS fell out with the governor when an IT tender worth Ksh 10 million was awarded to an associate to help him recover some of his costs, but the governor, through Oindo, terminated the tender and awarded it to somebody else. An angry Dr. Obondo is said to have fumed and told the Governor to refund him the money he had spent supporting his lifestyle when he was broke before he stormed out of the country to go to his home in Dallas, United States, where he remained for a whole month. Obondo is said to have come back on assurance that he would get some projects with which he could pay himself and make some money.
As a county, Migori has suffered immense looting and stands out as one of the few counties in which the local government has not started any publicly beneficial projects. All the major projects in that county have been initiated and funded by the national government either directly or by proxies and the county on its own has nothing to show for all the money disbursed to it.
Ayacko is also accused of arbitrarily sacking workers employed by his predecessors to replace them with his relatives and political supporters. Some of those workers have gone to court in an effort to get their salaries for up to 12 months paid, but the administration has been adamant that it will not pay them as they were not regularly hired.
Migori is also one of the counties fingered by the Auditor General for having more than the permitted number of bank accounts at 306 and it is believed those accounts were used, or are used to hide the race of money stolen from county coffers. The accounts are also held contrary to the Public Finance Management Act and constitute economic crimes.
The office of the County Attorney, occupied by one of Ayacko’s friends, was allocated an incredible budget of Ksh 168 million, which is believed to be budgeted corruption. Ayacko is a non-practicing law graduate, and the offices of county attorneys have been used as conduits for money stolen by governors and top county officials channeled through lawyers as legal fees for non-existent cases or exaggerated legal fees. One such county is Nairobi, which channeled funds stolen by county governors through lawyers. Incidentally, while appearing before the Public Accounts Committee of the Senate at the start of his term, Ayacko accused former Governor Obado of stealing through his then county attorney’s office.
A local consultancy firm was paid Ksh 14,332,500 to prepare the Kehancha Municipality Development Plan. However, the development plan was not completed as per the original work plan, due to which the public has not obtained value for the money spent on the project. It is noteworthy that most of the money that was pilfered in the Obado years was taken through “consultancy” firms that wrote fictitious reports and were paid hundreds of millions of shillings for providing consultancy on such needs as where to locate markets, whether the county should have ICT centres at the wards, and other creations that justified the immediate disbursement of funds without the requirement of physical proof of development having been undertaken. ICT was also another area through which funds were siphoned and hundreds of millions of shillings were paid to host companies for what are now ghost projects.
Earlier last week, the County Government came under fire for procuring dairy cattle in a cattle programme started by former governor Okoth Obado. This time Governor Ayacko had set aside an astronomical Ksh 240 million, of which only Ksh 9 million was spent on the project while the rest is alleged to have been pocketed. The government was accused of setting aside Ksh 240 million to buy dairy cows for farmers but ended up spending only Ksh 9 million and has not offered any explanation for the missing Ksh 231 million that was budgeted for the exercise and is not available. While campaigning for office, Ayacko condemned the dairy cattle programme started by Obado, saying it had no impact on the lives of farmers. But critics point out that as a procurement taken out of the recurrent budget, the governor must have found it a convenient conduit for cash and simply adopted it without question as cattle have no fixed value. However, the impact of the programme, which is highly discriminatory and selective, has not been felt in the county’s milk production. Development experts point out that the county could have been better off spending money on developing a bovine semen programme for artificial insemination to develop local breeds at a lower cost rather than pouring money into a corruption Black Hole.