A visit by three Kisii Ward Representatives to a funeral in Bobasi Wednesday afternoon nearly turned tragic after armed goons waylaid and attacked them with crude weapons.
The three – Michael Motume (Masige East ) Naftal Onkoba (Nyacheki) and Thomas Obare (Boitangare) said they escaped death by a whisker during the late Wednesday incident in Masige West Ward.
They said only when they collectively decided to face off the goons they were able to get off danger.
With the help of some youth keeping vigil at the bereaved family, the three were rescued and escorted out.
“We could be in a morgue right now,” Obare narrated at a press conference in Kisii town.
The three had gone to condole Dr Enoch Ondari, who had lost his mother Bathsheba Otieno.
Dr Ondari, a former Kisii Teaching and Referral Hospital chief executive officer had recently announced a bid to challenge sitting Governor Simba Arati in the 2027 elections.
Speaking to journalists, the Ward Reps fingered a colleague from the area for sponsoring the violence against them.
“Barely had we drove far from Ondari home when the goons challenged us to stop. No sooner had we slowed down, for they (the goons) appeared aggressive than they started banging the car windscreens to force them open and asking that we alight,” narrated Motume.
” We quickly stepped out and the youth begun bouncing on beating us up. But quickly i dashed back to my car and picked a club and with it we managed to push them back and begun to negotiate for our safety w and that is how they told us who paid them to come and fight us.”
The Ward Rep said they were not in the region for any political mission nor campaign but as act of mercy-to condole Dr Ondari for the loss of his mother .
“This was not their (goons) mother who had died, it was our friend’s … Is is absurd that a colleague can turn against his colleague just because we have decided to differ in our political differences,” added Motume.
The Ward Reps insinuated the frosty relationship between them and Governor Arati as among they suspect reasons they were attacked.
Obare condemned the growing political extremism and the culture of violence gripping Kisii at the moment. .
Onkoba said he was at the funeral in the capacity as a friend and relative of the Dr Ondari family and not as a politician to warrant the attack .
“Even when we don’t subscribe to the same political ideologies, let’s respect one another, the constitution gives all of us the freedom to travel anywhere and freely express himself as long it doesn’t incite violence.”
” I request all the Masige West residents to embrace peace so that we join hands in sending off Mama Bathsheba Otieno in a decent way,” he said.
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