Coast must stick with Ruto to sustain growth

UDA secretary general Hassan Omar at NITA ground on Monday /BRIAN OTIENO

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Coast leaders must ensure Mombasa and the region continue benefiting from Kenya’s development journey, UDA secretary general Hassan Omar has said.

He said for this to happen, there must be continuity in the country’s only leadership that has remembered the region.

For ages, the Coast region has been forgotten, with regime after regime giving lip service to the region, Omar said.

“For many years, we have been weak and people have disrespected us, calling us lazy. In every regime that has been there, the problems have remained the same despite having memoranda,” Omar said.

“This time there has been no memorandum but action. We have never had representation like we have now. We have roads being constructed, bridges, dams and title deeds being distributed.”

He said there have been more gains at the Coast from the Ruto administration than from all the previous regimes combined.

Omar spoke to Nyumba Kumi ambassadors from Kisauni subcounty at the National Industrial Training Institute.

He criticised those in the united opposition seeking to oust President William Ruto, saying most of them have been in power and did nothing for the Coast region.

“I hear some of them are in Mombasa today. Some, instead of singing Wantam, should be telling us what happened to our 380 children when they were in power for 10 years,” Omar said.

“Which rivers are they in? Some should not go to State House, they should go to jail.”

The former Mombasa senator has been castigating those CSs who worked under President Uhuru Kenyatta, during which time there were cases of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, with one of the most shocking cases being the bodies of unknown people being fished out of River Yala.

The UDA secretary general, who is eyeing the Mombasa governor seat in the 2027 general elections, said party leaders, especially those from the Coast region, will not sit and listen to people attacking a man who has dignified the region by initiating numerous development projects.

The rallying call for UDA leaders at the Coast, led by Omar, is to have as many young people as possible register as voters so as to overwhelmingly vote for Ruto’s second term in office.

They are now amplifying the move to simplify the process of getting national ID cards for people at the Coast, saying it was one of the hurdles that Coast residents faced in trying to get the identification documents.

Ruto has officially abolished the discriminatory extra vetting process for national identity cards in Northern Kenya and border counties.

On February 5, 2025, Ruto signed a presidential decree at Orahey grounds in Wajir county to officially end the mandatory vetting requirement in Northeastern and border regions.

For decades, minority communities and residents of northern Kenya, many of whom are of Somali or Islamic background, had to face an extra panel and bureaucratic hurdles to prove their citizenship before receiving a national ID card.

Ruto said the practice was unconstitutional, discriminatory and unjust.

The extra vetting had also affected most of Coast residents, especially those in Kwale and Lamu counties.

“And then you come to Mombasa asking us to vote for you as our next president? Anyone in Mombasa who will be receiving such people will be doing an injustice to the generation that was discriminated against,” Omar said.

He spoke as presidential hopeful Fred Matiang’i, who took over the mantle of the Jubilee party leadership from former President Uhuru on September 22, embarked on a five-day tour of the Coast region on Monday.

Matiang’i’s tour came barely two days after Ruto completed his eight-day tour of the Coast.

Political observers say Matiang’i is on a mission to erase the gains that Ruto may have made in his tour.

However, Jubilee deputy party leader Beatrice Gambo dismissed this assertion, saying the tour had long been planned and it was just a coincidence that the timing happened as it did.

“Our visit was not pegged on Ruto’s visit. It is a visit that has been pending and had been planned way before. It is not guided by whether Ruto came or not. Even if Ruto would have still been here, we would still proceed with our visit,” Gambo said.

On Monday, Omar said the Coast has not forgotten what the previous regimes did to them.

“The only time we may give them our votes is when Ruto completes his second term and only after they have returned our lands,” Omar said.

He said if fighting for the lands of the people of the Coast region is tribalism, then let him be called tribal.

Omar lamented the skewed development in the country, saying Ruto has been working to reverse this.

“One corner of the country today has 80 per cent road coverage. But if for the first time another corner gets road networks, it becomes a cause for lamenting for other people,” Omar said.

He said President Ruto has broken the expectations of some tycoons in the country who have been benefiting from skewed development and who are now unhappy with his method of working.

“They expected the dynasties to continue ruling but Kenyans stepped in the middle, grabbed the ball, and passed it to Ruto,” Omar said.