Opinion

How Raila’s ODM Party Has Used, Dumbed, Isolated and Neglected Norman Magaya

Published

5 years ago

September 3, 2019

By Social media user Seth Odongo

Many of you may have read that Norman Magaya, the former head of NASA Coalition Secretariat, collapsed at Bomas of Kenya in August 2017 during the verification of presidential votes. Here is an article that reported the incident.

Many of you may not know, however, that Mr. Magaya has been battling a heart condition arising from that incident, sometimes spending months in the hospital, his condition improving only to deteriorate again.

Magaya served NASA at a time the opposition front needed someone with his courage, tenacity, and loyalty.

Long before the handshake, it was actors like Norman Magaya who the system singled out to torment – and torment the system did – to stop the pressure and the agitation.

The Bomas incident is well known to the people who should know, and it is generally understood that it was not natural. Magaya must have been poisoned. Or something more terrible happened there.

Right now Magaya is so weak and thin; the body wasted by whatever it is that happened to him at Bomas, the spirit stung by the disloyalty, the isolation and the neglect by the political class he dutifully served.

Raila Odinga at Nairobi Hospital where he visited Norman Magaya Photo|ODM party

Now, long before Magaya there was another case. That of Kenyatta University students whom Olive Muganda suspended/expelled after a 2013 vote stuffing scandal that students unearthed at Kenyatta University’s main campus, leading to chaos.

These students were seeking the then CORD, and specifically ODM, and particularly ODM Leader Raila Odinga, to intervene and have them return to school and complete their studies. They’d been processed quickly through university disciplinary mechanisms and punitively condemned.

I remember this case because when we pushed so hard and @silasjakakimba managed to fix an audience between these students and Mr. Odinga, he called the then ODM Executive Director Magerer Langat to follow up the issue with Prof. Mugenda.

Magerer spent weeks and months pussyfooting on the issue; and never made any contact. Of course politics never stopped and politicians moved on to other things BUT the academic lives of these students stopped.

The one who had been expelled – Oluoch Dan Owino – sued KU and though the judge, Mumbi Ngugi, found that the students had been processed arbitrarily, still left their fate at the mercy of the managers of KU, who never showed any empathy.

The other students served their years – between three to five years – and returned to complete their studies. Some never returned, with no one to pay their fees and HELB cancelling their loans. They are part of the statistics of wasted, like Karl Max Owiro before them.

The expelled student, Oluoch Dan Owino, after trying endlessly to regain admission at KU to no avail, got a Norwegian scholarship through the help of

@LempaaSuyinka and @GitobuImanyara and left for Norway.

I digress to the story of the KU students to demonstrate to you what seems to be happening to Norman Magaya.

From my conversation with several people with direct knowledge of the matter, Mr. Odinga had apparently directed that Orange House takes charge of the matter and ensures Magaya gets the support he needs.

Like Magerer Langat before him, Oduor Ong’wen is dithering on the issue, and is NOT giving the kind of leadership needed to ensure Magaya’s condition gets the attention it requires.

Oduor Ong’wen knows Comrade Norman Magaya is in bad shape. He also knows when he had the energy and the health; none was a more dependable comrade than Magaya.

Some people were saying Mr Kawino (Finance Director) is the problem, or Charles Memba (Accountant); but I reject these insinuations. If the party leader made a pronouncement on Magaya, it is the ED to effect it. If not, that matter goes to the SG, @edwinsifuna

Finally, these things can make you have so many enemies but nothing disgusts me than the betrayal. Let’s not wait to send ‘heartfelt condolences’, wallowing in pretentious shock, yet now, those who should know Magaya is suffering are acutely aware; and are doing NOTHING.

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are writer’s own and doesn’t represent Kenya Insights’.

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