ODM leader Raila Odinga. [Photo/the-star.co.ke]
Opposition leader Raila Odinga claims the Jubilee administration has manufactured the current food crisis in the country.
Mr Odinga, the National Super Alliance (Nasa) presidential candidate, on Wednesday accused the government of frustrating efforts to import maize at a lower cost from Ethiopia.
The government had imported maize from Mexico in a bid to counter the shortage.
Odinga said Ethiopia had a bumper harvest last year, and the government should have considered getting the maize from there.“While the rest of East Africa was experiencing drought, Ethiopia harvested 4,000,000 metric tonnes of maize. Of this, 1,000,000 tons were a surplus and available for export,” he said, during a press briefing on Wednesday.Odinga told President Uhuru Kenyatta to form a commission to investigate the present food shortage to ascertain the causes and to make recommendations to prevent recurrence. “The President should also remove the responsibility of importing maize from private millers and entrust it with the Strategic Grain Reserves Fund. The fund’s officers must go to Ethiopia and carry out emergency purchases and ensure they get to Kenya immediately. The Government has abdicated its responsibility for a threat to national security to profit-making companies.”The former Prime Minister accused Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Willy Bett and his PS Paul Mwangi as well as Devolution and Planning CS Mwangi Kiunjuri who he accused of deliberately misleading Kenyans on the famine situation.He asked the President to relieve the two of their duties.The CS, however, said the hunger in the country was not imaginary but real.“In November 2016, after reviewing the situation, the government upscaled the intervention programme by putting in place a four faced national drought mitigation programme running between November 2016 to October 2017,” he said.