How ODM top brass 'saved' Mudavadi

By Martin Mutua

Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi can sleep easy because Parliament won’t be pressing him to take "political responsibility" for the Sh283 million cemetery scandal under his ministry.

Mudavadi survived the bid by one committee of the House to put him through the nightmarish experience that forced Foreign Minister Moses Wetang’ula to step aside after his party’s top leadership weighed in on two departmental committees wrangling over whether his name should be in the final report.

The committees, both headed by Orange Democratic Movement MPs, wanted his name in the final report, another said this should not happen. The first committee had in fact lost its chairman, Shakeel Shabir, who was reportedly forced to quit from the Local Government committee after he refused to tone down the report indicting Mudavadi.

His successor, Mohamed Gabow, who like Shabir is an ODM Member, had vowed he would let the members of his committee decide whether to go ahead with its original report or the one, which was product of ‘harmonisation’ with that of Local Authorities and Funds Accounts Committee.

Wundanyi MP Thomas Mwadegu, who is also an ODM MP, heads the second committee.

Politically risky

However, three members of the committee headed by Gabow, who disowned the ‘harmonised’ report asked their chairman to explain why he visited the office of Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Mudavadi on Monday evening.

"We hope he was visiting those two offices for his own errands because as a committee, we never sent him to those two offices," added Kinangop MP David Ngugi who is also the Vice-Chairman of the committee. The scandal over the purchase of new burial site by City Council of Nairobi at what is said to be a heavily inflated price was politically risky to Mudavadi because it has landed his former PS Sammy Kirui in trouble.

The suspended PS, who is among those who have been charged with the scandal alongside Nairobi Mayor Geophrey Majiwa — who also stepped aside — claimed Mudavadi was not as innocent as he claimed. He even dismissed the DPM as a "serial liar".

Sources told The Standard top ODM officials — to whom Mudavadi is the deputy party leader — lobbied MPs to ‘save’ the Local Government Minister from suffering the humiliating experience Wetang’ula went through before finally crumbling in the face of pressure by the media and MPs. Wetang’ula’s case was ‘prosecuted’ by the Defence Committee.

Yesterday, Local Authorities Committee Chairman Mohamed Gabow — who is an ODM member — tabled a ‘harmonised’ report that absolved Mudavadi of any wrongdoing in the scandal in which NCC paid Sh283 million for a rocky patch of land whose real worth is less that Sh20 million. The land was to be used as a cemetery after the Langata cemetery ran out of space.

The move to table a "harmonised report", however, puts the House in an awkward position, as there are two reports before it from two different committees on the same issue.

Impeccable sources told The Standard that ODM top brass had lobbied members of the two committees to ensure Mudavadi’s name was removed from the report.

Cherangany MP Julius Kutuny said Shabir was on record as having told the committee before he resigned he had been summoned by the PM and told to ensure Mudavadi’s name did not feature. "I can swear that when Shabir came to the committee he told us that he had been summoned by the PM and told to ensure the DPM’s name is not in the report and that is what led to his resignation," added Kutuny. Earlier in the morning, during a tense Local Authorities Committee meeting under the chairmanship of Gabow, the three MPs differed with their colleagues on whether the report that was tabled by Shabir should be withdrawn.

The report had called on Mudavadi to step aside over the cemetery scandal.

The three members who included Ngugi, Kutuny and Kilgoris MP Gideon Konchellah disowned the "harmonised’ report and insisted they will demand to have the original report debated by the House. "When the report was laid in the House in March it became the property of the House and cannot just be withdrawn by a committee. There has to be a resolution of the House to do so," added Ngugi.

Ngugi said their original findings still stand and that anybody who attempts to dilute them would be undertaking an exercise in futility.

Konchellah on his part said the Government had used their original report to sack civil servants and even take others to court and wondered how it had now become irrelevant.

"You cannot withdraw a report you have already tabled in the House and I will not be part and parcel of withdrawing the report on the floor of the House," he vowed.

Kutuny claimed the Government had used their report to suspend other people and vowed they will resist attempts to withdraw it from the House.

According to the ‘Harmonised’ Report, the committee states that according to the evidence adduced, and in the absence of documentary evidence implicating Mudavadi, his possible culpability could not be established and they were, therefore, leaving it to the investigatory agencies.

"Though the PS mentioned that he briefed the minister, the minister denied this claim and the committee was unable to establish this assertion as there was no documentary evidence," adds the recommendation.

It further states that the committee noted that the minister was aware of the matter but was not adequately briefed. No action is recommended against him.

"However investigations should continue to determine his possible culpability in the saga," says the report.