The So­mali com­mu­nity in Mom­basa has asked Aden Duale to stop med­dling in pol­i­tics in the county led by Has­san Joho.

Chair­man Ab­dul­rah­man Yusuf said Duale, who is Na­tional As­sem­bly Ma­jor­ity leader and Garissa Town MP, can­not “dic­tate” who the com­mu­nity should vote for on Au­gust 8.

Yusuf said the com­mu­nity was well-in­formed on this and that his at­tacks on their lead­ers will not sway them.

He said Duale’s style of pol­i­tics will not go down well with them and asked him to keep off or face their wrath.

“The com­mu­nity is fo­cused on try­ing to unite the 10 sub-clans but he is busy in­ter­fer­ing. Some peo­ple he prefers will ac­tu­ally not get the com­mu­ni­ty’s votes,” he said.

He spoke at the Star’s of­fice on Mon­day when he said the com­mu­nity had re­solved to back Jo­ho’s re-elec­tion.

Yusuf also de­manded that Duale should stop his “un­end­ing” at­tack on Joho and other ODM lead­ers in the county.

Duale said on Sun­day that the Gov­er­nor was un­e­d­u­cated and that some of his mis­judg­ment re­sulted from lack of un­der­stand­ing.

He echoed Deputy Pres­i­dent William Ru­to’s sen­ti­ment that Joho bought his aca­d­e­mic pa­pers. But Kam­pala Uni­ver­sity said Joho le­git­i­mately earned his de­gree from the in­sti­tu­tion.

The Ma­jor­ity leader fur­ther said work­ers in the Ex­port Pro­cess­ing Zone were suf­fer­ing be­cause Changamwe MP Omar Mwinyi (ODM) was an in­ept leader.

The own­ers of the EPZ, An­tex Pro­cess­ing Zone, said em­ploy­ees were sus­pended af­ter 12 pro­duc­tion lines were shut due to tech­ni­cal hitches.

Duale said politi­cian Abdi Daib of Ju­bilee would give Changamwe res­i­dents proper rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

But Yusuf said he will hold cri­sis talks for Daib to de­camp from Ju­bilee to ODM as he will not be guar­an­teed the ticket for Changamwe MP.

“Joho, be­ing the ODM deputy party leader and who lends us his ears, is in the right po­si­tion to give Daib the Nom­i­nated MP slot in the event he de­camps from Ju­bilee,” he said.

Yusuf also said the com­mu­nity will have a can­di­date for the Deputy Gov­er­nor slot in the 2022 gen­eral elec­tion. DG Hazel Katana switched al­le­giance from ODM to Ju­bilee.

Duale said Joho should not get a sec­ond term for what he termed poor lead­er­ship and sub­ject­ing the So­mali com­mu­nity to ne­glect.

But Yusuf said they have ben­e­fited im­mensely un­der his lead­er­ship and that Duale’s claim was un­founded.
“We were given two se­nior posts at the gov­ern­ment, one be­ing the ex­ec­u­tive slot. County ad­min­is­tra­tor Idris Ab­dul­rah­man is one of us. More than 150 youths from our com­mu­nity have been em­ployed across var­i­ous de­part­ments,” he said.