Cornered Rift Valley Leaders to Now Buy a 24 Acre Narok South Land for Mau Evictees

The Mau issue has grown into a political behemoth threatening to provide a monumental political backlash against DP William Ruto against his presidential bid in 2022. Already, the squatters who were kicked out of the water tower have vowed to teach Rift Valley leaders a political lesson in the next general elections for using and dumping them by making fake promises regarding the Mau issue. In 2013, DP William Ruto lead Rift Valley politicians to gang up against Raila Odinga who had come out to strongly stop encroachment of the forest land.

For a fear of 2022 backlash, Rift Valley leaders have now have identified a 24-acre parcel in Tendwet, Narok South Constituency, where some of the 10,000 families evicted from the Maasai Mau Forest will be temporarily settled. Kericho Senator Aaron Cheruiyot said families that moved out of the 17,101 acres that was declared Government forest and have nowhere to go would be given priority.

“The land will be used to temporarily shelter Mau evictees who are in absolute distress and don’t have alternative land,” Mr Cheruiyot said at Chelilis AIC in Kericho County.Sources said a group of Rift Valley leaders raised funds to purchase land to resettle the most vulnerable.

It is not clear how much money has been raised towards the initiative, but it appears the leaders have given up hope of the Government resettling evictees.An MP said the move to raise funds to settle evictees was arrived at after wide consultations and to avoid political backlash.

News of the land being bought by the leaders came just a day after the State sealed the fate of the settlers ordered out of the forest by planting some 10 million tree seedlings on the land they previously occupied.

The political class in the region has been urging the Government to compensate or offer the evictees alternative land.Yesterday, Cheruiyot and MPs Kiptergech Mutai (Bureti), Brighton Yegon (Konoin) and Florence Bore (Kericho Woman Representative) called for immediate arrest of all Government officials involved in the demarcation and allocation of land in the Mau Forest complex.

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