Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja says he is ready to discuss his differences with Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua instead of engaging words in public.
The two leaders have differed in the past few weeks over Governor Sakaja’s plans to kick out matatus from the Central Business District (CBD), as well as his crackdown on nightclubs.
On Sunday, Gachagua urged matatu operators to ignore Sakaja’s directive to relocate from the city center and continue with their businesses. He assured the operators that the government will protect them against the plan he argues will stifle Nairobi’s economy.
But on Tuesday, Governor Sakaja said he respects the deputy president as a senior leader and is not in a fight with him, adding that President Ruto fully backs his bid to restore sanity in the city.
“I am not in a fight with the deputy president. I respect him as an old man and he is at a higher position than me in terms of the party,” Sakaja told Inooro TV in an interview.
“There is a way the national government should relate with the county governments. Although I do not want to speak much about him because he is my boss, there might be somewhere we disagreed and it would be best for us to sit and discuss instead of taking them to the public.”
He dismissed claims by Gachagua that his administration was enacting anti-business policies targeting business people from the Mt Kenya region.
Sakaja stated that Nairobi is a cosmopolitan county and does not belong to one tribe.
“There is something called Nairobi reality, which is about its cosmopolitan nature and the political party diversity therein,” he said.
He added: “There are things that we are supposed to do away from public glare…and I am concerned that these politics of today are introducing me to tribal dimensions, while all along I have never even imagined profiling tribes.”
