This archive report was first published on 10 October 2019.
Published on October 10, 2019, the Mijikenda community in Mombasa city county is gearing up to unite and take over the governorship after the current term of Governor Hassan Joho.
Among the issues under discussion by a committee formed to fine-tune the roadmap towards realising the leadership goal is how to overcome the assumption from Swahili and Arabs that the Mijikenda, despite being the majority with about 60% of the vote in the port city, can never unite for any political course due to factors like poverty.
"We know many people don't take us seriously when we say we will unite to take over leadership positions in Mombasa. But the kind of civic education and other strategies we have put in place going forward will definitely catch up with our opponents flatfooted in 2022," said one of the Mijikenda elites involved in the leadership agenda.
Several Mijikenda candidates are being looked at closely by the committee to eventually decide who among them is most suitable to carry out the task of delivering the governorship seat to the community after Joho exits.
Francis Thoya, the immediate former Mombasa county secretary, and Kisauni MP Ali Menza Mbogo are among the top contenders. Thoya, nicknamed Magufuli during his tenure as CS due to his ability to deliver difficult tasks at short notice, has become a popular figure in the port city since his removal.
Thoya has attracted a lot of sympathy from Mijikenda and others who say he was the force behind the implementation of several projects in the port city and that his removal was maliciously orchestrated.
"We know that Thoya's removal was engineered by political busybodies who felt threatened by his growing profile but let them know we have bigger plans for him and they cannot stop the will of the people. We want him to become the next governor to improve the deplorable state that Mombasa finds itself today due to mediocre leadership," said Hassan Rama, a human rights activist.
