Kenya: A TV set causes death in a family – Dispute over a remote control

Girl kills father after they disagree over TV

 

By Cyrus OmbatiA girl’s rage turned tragic when she defied her father and killed him following a row over a TV programme.

In the incident in Nairobi’s Kibera slums, the father’s love of football cost him his life when his stepdaughter, a 17-year-old Form Three student, allegedly stabbed him three times in the chest before she escaped.

Mr Albert Kipkoech Kosio, the father of five, wanted to watch the football match between Harambee Stars and Brave Warriors of Namibia while the teenager wanted to watch a movie in their one room house.left for dead

According to neighbours, the two picked a quarrel before the girl allegedly stabbed Kosio, leaving him for dead. Kosio was until his death a security officer at the Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi. The girl is a secondary school student in Kitengela.

Kosio had arrived home on Saturday at about 4pm and tuned to KTN that was airing the match live from the Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani.

Nairobi’s Kibera residents watch from a distance following the killing of Mr Albert Kipkoech Kosio allegedly by his step-daughter. PHOTOS: tom maruko PHOTOS: tom maruko

The girl’s younger brother, Titus, said his sister walked in minutes later and demanded that she loads on a DVD that she had borrowed to watch a movie. But the 42-year-old man told her off and instead demanded to know why she had not gone to school.

“They picked a quarrel that lasted up to the end of the first half of the match when the father decided to leave the house,” said a neighbour.Mother just watched

As Kosio stepped out, the girl is said to have uttered remarks about him that caused him to go back. A confrontation ensued and was stabbed three times in the chest and hand.

All along, the girl’s mother is said to have watched the confrontation helplessly. Kosio had lived with the girl’s mother for the last 11 years although he was not her biological father. He was also married to a second woman with whom they had one child.

Neighbours say he and the girl did not get along well for a long time. Titus said he had left the house when his father called him and asked him to return and help him.

“I found him seated on the sofa bleeding. I requested for help from the neighbours. He died as we rushed him to hospital,” said a tearful Titus.

Police arrived at the house hours after the incident was reported and went with the killer weapon and some of the clothes Kosio wore. Kilimani acting OCPD Samuel Mukindia said they were looking for the girl to record a statement.

“It seems to be murder, but we are still looking for the girl to hear from her. The mother was arrested and later released after recording a statement,” Mr Mukindia told The Standard.

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API/Source. standard.ke

 

The rift in ODM – Many ODM MPs desrespected Raila by not listening to his key note speech. Is ODM party dying?

Raila dares rebels

 

By Abiya Ochola

 

Prime Minister Raila Odinga came out fighting at the ODM retreat in Naivasha, castigating dissenting MPs calling for the formation of a Grand Opposition.

Setting the agenda for the party retreat, a tough-talking Raila said his party would not allow MPs to join non-party members to undermine the values and principles the party stood for.

“Do not try to split the party. You cannot join hands with members of other parties and still purport to be in ODM. We cannot have members who score in our own goal after we pass the ball to them,” he said.

The PM argued that ODM had clear values that it used in its campaign and the party would not allow the values to be watered or distorted by unwarranted alliances.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga (left) is received by ODM chairman Henry Kosgey at the Simba Lodge in Naivasha for the party retreat on Sunday. On the right is the party’s Director of Communication, Mr Ahmed Hashi. PHOTO: COLLINS KWEYU

“There are things which are unique to the party and cannot be shared. These are held by all MPs both in Government and the Backbench. We must have our MPs in the backbench and not as an opposition,” he said.

Raila tore into the proponents of the Grand Opposition, saying they were yet to convince him or anybody in the world that a grand opposition idea has been adopted and works effectively without splitting parties.

But the MPs, led by Budalang’i MP Ababu Namwamba, skipped the speech, as did all but one MP from South Rift.

And for the first time since the General Election, the Pentagon comprising ODM top five leaders did not sit together. Water Minister Charity Ngilu was absent.

“I want to be convinced why our colleagues should want to check us using an official outfit together with those who we fought against,” he said.

Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi set the tempo when he told the 200 delegates at the National Governing Council meeting that in as much as there was freedom of expression in the party, ODM would not allow hurling of insults by MPs towards party leadership and the PM.

“We have freedom of speech, but we cannot allow people to be carried away so that they hurl insults at the PM and the party hierarchy. This was witnessed in Kitale when an MP joined our opponents to attack the PM,” he said.

Desist from populist politics

Raila said there was no room for the Grand Opposition because the Grand Coalition Government was a result of special conditions that did not warrant an opposition.

“In a Grand Coalition, partners check each other and that is why a minister will also act as a whistleblower,” he said.

The PM recalled that the rain started beating ODM after the formation of the Cabinet when some members were left out of Government.

“We were very united when we were negotiating with PNU to form a government … If my crime is that I left you out, then so be it,” he said.

He said ODM was a national movement and urged leaders to shun regional and ethnic politics that would undermine the popularity of the party.

On the controversial relocation of squatters at Mau Forest that has led to open rebellion by MPs in the South Rift, Raila said the party leadership should desist from populist politics.

“All those affected are our supporters and it is high time we led from the front instead of failing to give direction just because we fear antagonising the electorate,” he said, further denying allegations that he had been set up by President Kibaki to antagonise the South Rift voting block.

Six of the nine MPs from the region had not been at the retreat by the time this writer left Naivasha.

Two constituencies, Sotik and Bomet, are vacant following the death of Lorna Laboso and Kipkalya Kones in a plane accident.

Raila added: “I am not stupid to beat my own people. What I am doing is for the common good. Should we allow Mau settlement and save our votes or resettle the people elsewhere and have water in our rivers?”

Even as Raila spoke, proponents of the Grand Opposition were absent. The MPs arrived five minutes after Raila had given his keynote address. Those who arrived with Namwamba were Mr Isaac Ruto, Mr Moses Lessonet and Mr Boaz Kaino.

Another dissenting voice, Mr Franklin Bett, arrived one hour after the meeting had started. But Assistant minister Charles Keter was at the retreat from the beginning.

Curiously, the Pentagon members did not sit at the high table as expected. Only Raila, Mr Mudavadi, Secretary-General Anyang’ Nyong’o, Chairman Henry Kosgey, Party Whip Jakoyo Midiwo and secretariat chief Janet Ongera sat at the high table together.

Party agenda

Other Pentagon members, Cabinet Ministers William Ruto, Najib Balala and Joseph Nyaga sat with the delegates. By the time we went to press, Ngilu had not responded to an enquiry from The Standard seeking to know why she was not at the meeting.

This is the first Governing Council meeting after the formation of the Grand Coalition and comes at a time when the party is at a crossroads, with internal dissent threatening to tear it apart.

Other items on the agenda at the retreat are the amendment of the party constitution to comply with the Political Parties Act, National Accord and the Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Act.

The NGC will also recommend the restructuring and reorganisation of the party. Insiders say the Pentagon could be scrapped.

The retreat will also set the date for branch elections.

The meeting ends Monday. Recommendations will be adopted and announced to rejuvenate the party ahead of the tricky by-elections in Sotik and Bomet.

“We did not cross River Jordan as expected, but we agreed to form a coalition Government because we knew there was still another day. We formed the coalition because our people were suffering and we needed to keep Kenya going. We should leave here more united and focused,” Raila said

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API/Source.standard.ke

Rift Valley MPs are not happy to be part of ODM, Raila’s party

ODM’s make or break meeting

 

By Dennis Onyango

The Orange Democratic Movement retreats to Naivasha today to make its constitution comply with the demands of the new Political Parties Act.

The retreat, the biggest in number and significance since the party was co-opted into government, according to Secretary General Prof Anyang’ Nyong’o, is also to set the stage for the party’s grassroots elections.

<The ODM thinkers focusing

But beneath the veneer of housekeeping issues, a heavy agenda awaits the party’s top rank. Away from the obvious, a wave of discontent is sweeping through the party and ODM may find itself spending more time discussing its leadership and internal communication gaps than the official agenda. There is a divide between those who believe ODM is in government, and needs to pursue a national agenda, and those who think the Orange party was not ‘fully’ accepted in the coalition and is being treated as such.

This second group argues ODM should hang on to its support bloc in preparation for the 2012 General Election, even if that paralyses the national agenda.

ODM members at a past function. Party MPs are bracing for a meeting where key decisions are likely to be made

It argues it does not pay to jump headlong into government, and behave as one, when the reality is that some things are done without ODM’s input.

As one MP put it, the party needs to “take care of its flock” and, “come to terms with the politics of Kenya” knowing its friends and enemies.

The party also has no single position on those held over post-election violence, and some MPs are asking for blanket release. MPs from two of the party’s biggest support blocks, Nyanza and Rift Valley provinces, are grumbling for different reasons.

In the Rift Valley, it began with protest by the South Rift it got a raw deal in Cabinet appointments during power-sharing with the President’s Party of National Unity. The region inhabited by the largest Kalenjin sub-group, the Kipsigis, got only one Cabinet post. Another sub-group, the Nandi, which is second in size, got three.

The sense of betrayal was compounded by government plans to have those who were allocated land in the Mau Forest, a key water tower, evicted. Some MPs say this has put them in conflict with their voters.

Some MPs say others have seized the grumbling over the appointments and the Mau to create bad blood between Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Agriculture Minister William Ruto.

As a result of the accusations, the Eldoret North MP is said to be avoiding meeting Rift Valley MPs on any issue. But that has only fuelled tension.

The grumbling over appointments ebbed with the death of Bomet MP Kipkalya Kones and Sotik MP Lorna Laboso in a plane crash in June.

But interviews with the leaders from the region reveal it is a lull before the storm. It all depends on how ODM handles the anticipated reshuffle to fill the vacancies after the two deaths. Kones was Roads minister while Laboso was an Assistant Minister for Home Affairs, in the Office of the Vice-President.

The appointment of Mr Chris Obure as acting Minister for Roads did not go down well with the South Rift. There will be a rebellion should the substantive appointment to the ministry go to an MP from outside the South Rift.

“South Rift is saying ‘Kones passed away, God rest his soul in peace, but why in God’s name did they not appoint an MP from this region to act?” an MP from the Rift Valley, asked.

“In the South Rift, they are waiting to see who replaces Kones. If the Ministry of Roads goes elsewhere, it would be war straightaway. That issue is hotter than Mau,” the MP said.

A number of the party’s MPs, including Cabinet Ministers, told The Standard on Sunday, the retreat could be the party’s best and last chance to sort out the grumbling and distrust that has been building up since the Cabinet was formed about four months ago.

The grumbling has seen ODM MPs link up with others from rival parties to push an agenda the leadership opposes. One such is the agitation for a grand opposition in Parliament. One of the leading voices in this line up is Budalang’i MP Ababu Namwamba, who is the secretary of the ODM Parliamentary Group.

“There is discontent in the party. That cannot be denied. The meeting will allow people to vent their feelings,” Kisumu Town West MP Olago Aluoch, said.

“If people are allowed to air their frustrations freely, ODM would come out of Naivasha a stronger and united party. I am sure that is what will happen,” he added.

Part of the problem, according to Belgut MP Charles Keter, is that the party hardly spares time for itself, being occupied with a national agenda.

“We used to have weekly meetings but we no longer do. It is long since we met,” Keter said.

The party had a brief meeting at the Safari Park Hotel in April, but a number of MPs say the time was not sufficient for them to exhaustively discuss their frustrations, especially over the formation of the Cabinet.

Its members in the Cabinet also met once to plot how to operate in the coalition without losing focus of the party’s agenda.

“This meeting is going to be useful to the party. People will openly air their views. There are people who had expectations who feel betrayed and we have never had a chance to ventilate on the issues,” Keter said.

Grumbling over appointments to the Cabinet is particularly thorny because it has extended to Luo Nyanza, though minimal there.

An MP from Nyanza, after missing out on the Cabinet, is now said to be paying others to ‘rebel’ and encouraging them to find comfort elsewhere, a development the PM is said to know.

Some of those who missed out on the Cabinet also had hopes of landing positions in House committees, which not everyone got.

“There is trouble within the Luo block of MPs itself. But rebellion among Luo MPs does not bother us. We have seen that before and voters will deal with it,” a minister from Nyanza said.

The grumbling has given birth to distrust in the party and bred another problem, which MPs say will feature in Naivasha. MPs, particularly from the Rift Valley, but with support of a few of their colleagues from Nyanza, claim the Party’s Whip Jakoyo Midiwo is antagonistic.

That situation is worsened by the fact that the Party Whip is close to the PM. Some take what he says to be the position of the PM.

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API/Source.standard.ke

Somalia: U.S. policy likely to bring blowback

The report, authored by Ken Menkhaus, a Davidson College professor who is regarded as one of the foremost U.S. experts on the Horn of Africa, calls for a thorough re-assessment of U.S. policy, including its support for the TFG and the primacy it has given to its “war on terrorism” in Somalia.

“U.S. counterterrorism policies have not only compromised other international agendas in Somalia, they have generated a high level of anti-Americanism and are contributing to radicalisation of the population,” concluded the report, entitled “Somalia: A Country in Peril, a Foreign Policy Nightmare”.

“In what could become a dangerous instance of blowback, defence and intelligence operations intended to make the United States more secure from the threat of terrorism may be increasing the threat of jihadist attacks on American interests,” the report stressed.

The 17-page report, released by ENOUGH, a group launched last year by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) and the Washington-based Centre for American Progress (CAP), was released amid continuing violence in Somalia that has forced some one million people to flee their homes since December 2006, when U.S.-backed Ethiopian and TFG forces swept the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) out of the capital, Mogadishu, and other major cities and towns.

The U.N. recently estimated that, barring substantial improvement in the security situation, some 3.5 million Somalis will be dependent on humanitarian aid by the end of this year.

“The (current) crisis is fundamentally different and fundamentally worse than the situation of the last decade and a half,” said Chris Albin-Lackey, a Horn of Africa specialist at Human Rights Watch (HRW), who appeared with Menkhaus at the report’s release at a conference sponsored by at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars here Wednesday.

Albin-Lackey, who has conducted some 80 interviews of Somali refugees in East Africa in the past month, said ongoing violence, including almost daily artillery bombardments by Ethiopian army and TFG forces on the one hand and opposition militias, including the Islamist Shabaab on the other, as well as assassinations carried out by both sides, have added to the insecurity.

“People have nowhere to turn for security,” he said, adding that search operations by TFG forces, while nominally for the purpose of arresting suspected insurgents, had become “an excuse for murder, rape and looting on an incredibly large scale.” As a result, he said, Mogadishu has become “largely depopulated” with about two-thirds of the population — or about 800,000 people — having left their homes there over the past 18 months.

Menkhaus described last month’s signing by the TCG and the opposition Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia (ARS) of the “Djibouti Agreement” negotiated between moderate leaders of both sides with the help of U.N. Special Representative Ahmadou Ould-Abdulla last June as an “important step” toward reconciliation but warned that hard-liners in both camps could derail it.

The agreement, which has been rejected by the Shabaab and was only agreed to by the hawkish TFG president, Adullahi Yusuf, under heavy pressure from Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi, calls for a cessation of hostilities, deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping force, and the subsequent withdrawal of Ethiopian forces.

“The hope is that any agreement that facilitates the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces will open the door for an end to the insurgency,” according to the report. But the implementation of the agreement faces “steep challenges”, warned Menkhaus.

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API/source.Inter Press Service (IPS), by Jim Lobe

South Africa: New reactor falls short of US standards

The PBMR demonstration reactor planned for Koeberg does not have a safety barrier – called a “secondary containment” – which is built into the design of all modern nuclear reactors to contain radiation in the event of an accident.

This raises questions regarding both public safety and the economic viability of the PBMR export project. Eskom plans to build 24 to 30 pebble beds for export, but specialists say it is highly improbable that any country would buy nuclear technology which the US has not certified.

A German nuclear scientist, who has recently reinvestigated safety problems of the nuclear plant that was the prototype of the South African pebble bed, said he considered it “irresponsible” to construct a nuclear plant without a secondary containment.

In simple terms, without this structure, there would be nothing to prevent a massive release of radioactivity into the environment if there were an accident.

The PBMR company, 100 percent owned by Eskom, is steaming ahead with the project, and said in its annual report that it hoped to “pour the concrete” of the first PBMR at Koeberg in 2010. Alistair Ruiters, chairperson of the PBMR board, said they were already looking beyond the demonstration plant to the commercial development of “a fleet of modular reactors”.

The South African taxpayers are bankrolling the bulk of the pebble bed project, as the international partners which Eskom hoped to attract have not materialised. The PBMR company says the total cost of the PBMR’s demonstration phase, including a number of other “essential programmes” to demonstrate the fuel and reactor technology, will be R31,9-billion.

Rainer Moormann, a nuclear scientist working for FZJ, a German research centre where the prototype pebble bed reactor was first developed, has published a paper about the “indisputable” facts relating to this reactor, called the AVR. It states that the old AVR plant was “heavily contaminated” with Strontium-90 and Caesium-137, which was the result of “inadmissible high core temperatures”. He said the problems with the AVR were not sufficiently understood, 20 years after its final shutdown.

This has implications for future pebble bed reactors, including the PBMR being developed by South Africa. But the PBMR company claims the PBMR is “inherently safe” and so needs no secondary containment.

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API/Source.Cape Times (South Africa), by Melanie Gosling

Nigeria: Ethanol project takes off

Briefing the press on establishment of the industry in the state, Chairman, CrowNek Green Energy Company, Mr James Awoniyi, expressed the need for the nation to develop agriculture, which he said has the capacity to solve both food and energy crises.

He said it is high time the country stopped chasing shadows in its quest to improve its economy by paying premium on agricultural development, disclosing that no country could be industrialised if the agricultural sector is allowed to suffer wanton neglect.

He observed that the only way the country could increase its foreign reserve is by diversifying its means of fuel production through domestic production of the Cassava-based fuel, ethanol.

He, therefore, called on government at all levels to rally support for production of fuel ethanol, to revamp the dwindling fortunes of the country’s economy.

According to him, internal production of the alternative fuel would afford the country the opportunity to export more crude oil, when the fuel ethanol could supplement domestic consumption of petroleum products.

While commending the state Governor, Segun Oni, for providing over 12, 000 hectares of land to the company for cassava production, Awoniyi called on other states to emulate the gesture.

According to him, the company would produce 180,000 litres of ethanol, 100 tons of starch and 50 tons of carbondioxide daily, which he disclosed would require 1500 tons of Cassava per day.

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API/Source.This Day (Nigeria), by Toba Suleiman

Cameroon: Another arena for war on corruption (Editorial)

For the purpose there exist the Supreme State Control, the Audit Bench of the Supreme Court, the Good Governance Programme, the National Anti-Corruption Commission (CONAC) and the National Agency for Financial Investigation (ANIF). In addition, the judiciary has become a power which has a free hand to investigate and bring to book persons suspected of corruption and embezzlement of state funds.

To this arsenal must be added anti-corruption units in various government ministries which are expected to monitor and check the spread of this canker worm called corruption. In effect, the famous “Operation Sparrow Hawk” has only given teeth to the fight as some top ranking government functionaries have been trapped by the anti-corruption dragnet.

Yet, in spite of this multiplicity of structures to fight against corruption, many officials charged with the management of state resources end up carrying them away. The case of the cashier in Douala who escaped with huge sums of money is a glaring example.

The fact that corruption continues to plague our society in spite of the ruthless attempts to punish culprits tends to frustrate the effort being made. There is therefore the need to diversify the approach by taking the crusade to individual level.

That was probably why the Minister of Finance, Essimi Menye, while installing newly-named finance officials last Monday called on them to open a new front in the fight in their various departments. The new directors of the treasury and that of CENADI (the Centre for the Development of Information Technology) were told to wage a relentless war against corruption and embezzlement. They were told to consider the fight against corruption a priority of priorities.

It is hoped that the appeal did not fall on deaf ears considering the context in which the appointments were made. The treasury department and CENADI are sensitive positions which require the services of morally upright and rigorous officials. In recent times, many persons serving in these departments have ended up in prison for acts of corruption, fraud or embezzlement. It is therefore important for the departments to consider themselves as an arena for the fight against corruption.

From that platform, there may be cooperation and synergy between structures like CONAC, the media, Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) anti-corruption units in the ministries and state structures in existence.

To win the war on corruption there is great need not only to diversify the approach but to work in total collaboration one with the other. No single structure, no matter how powerful, will win the fight alone.

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API/Source.Cameroon Tribune (Cameroon), by Martin A. Nkemngu

East Africa: Regional police to pursue Rwanda genocide fugitives

According to the summit’s resolutions document seen by The New Times, the Council of Police Chiefs recognized that genocide is a grave crime against humanity and decided to include it in their joint police cooperation agenda.

“Police chiefs resolved that they should implement that and specifically hunt down the genocide suspects of Rwanda,” said Mary Gahonzire, the acting Inspector General of Police who also attended the meeting.

She stressed that arresting more of the genociders would depend ‘very much on the commitment’ by member states, whose contribution her delegation highly appreciated.

“The Rwandan delegation thanked member states which had helped in tracking down those arrested so far,” she told The New Times on phone yesterday evening.

The meeting had been convened to discuss ways of joint police cooperation in preventing crimes in the region – countering possible cross-border crimes, terror acts, child trafficking and organized crime along borders, among others.

EAPCCO was established nine years ago in Kampala, Uganda. Its member states are Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Somalia, Eritrea, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Djibouti, and the Seychelles.

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API/Source.The New Times (Rwanda), by James Karuhanga

Kenya: Talk show breaks the ice on homosexuality

With the topic, Hatua, a project of the Mohamed Amin Foundation, supported by a grant from the Open Society Initiative for East Africa (OSIEA), aimed to highlight human rights issues surrounding the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community in Kenya and to open a dialogue around homosexuality.

Toni Kamau, producer of Hatua, said “this is the first time ever where the LGBTI has had the chance to air their views on national television”. She emphasized that the show was successful in raising the concern that discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people is a human rights issue.

A Kenyan LGBTI activist, Lourence Misedah, who was part of the panel, feels that the show was a good start to get people talking about homosexuality.
“I think this was a good start for opening up dialogue into making the public aware of what LGBTI people really are, without any biases since there were LGBTI people in the show speaking out to demystify some of the myths and misconceptions”, he said. 

Since homosexuality is prohibited and criminalized under section 162-165 of the Kenyan Penal code, BTM asked Misedah if taking part in the show would not endanger his life and he said “considering the pains I went through after coming out last year, I am a bit nervous since I shared my experience of the way I was treated in campus”.

He added that the show will be an eye opener to many and will give people a better understanding of LGBTI rights and issues, even those that could not be fully covered within the 45 minutes of the show. “It is therefore my hope that there would be follow up.”

LGBTI activists in Kenya state that homosexuality is still taboo and homosexuals still meet in private and many of them do not want to come out for fear of discrimination. Healthcare rights, the right to marry and the right to be are still a far fetched dream.

The show intended to reflect different opposing views by including both the LGBTI and heterosexual participants, bringing to the fore diverse views and strong debate. “HATUA is a balanced show promoting balanced journalism. We had to include people with opposing views in order to discuss the role society plays in terms of abuse of the lgbti human rights as well as to discuss the issue of acceptance in society” added Toni Kamau, producer of the show.

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API/Source.Behind the mask (South Africa), by Mongezi Mhlongo