There was showdown on Monday evening as four Nairobi gubernatorial hopefuls appeared for a televised debate session on KTN News.
Incumbent Governor Evans Kidero, Mike Sonko (Jubilee), Peter Kenneth and Miguna Miguna showed up at Daystar University where the debate was held.
Miguna kicked off the debate citing that Nairobi is lacking leadership.
“Nairobi need[s] a leader not a manager. I’ll hire managers to deal with different sectors.”
He said the other three candidates represent Kenya’s worst leaders.
He took a jibe on each of the candidates accusing them of corruption and running cartels.
In particular, he picked up a war with Kenneth who he accused of lacking any managerial and leadership skills.
The former advisor to the Raila Odinga accused Kenneth of frantically trying to bring down Kenya Re when he served as it boss.
“There’s a court order issued by the High Court against Peter Kenneth in his attempt to sell Kenya Re to the Monarch Insurance Corporation of Zimbabwe for sh800 million when Kenya Re was worth more than sh2 billion,” charged Miguna.
He said that Kenneth lacks any leadership qualities since his position as the head of Kenya Re was a reward from KANU leadership.
He described Kenneth as a “total failure”.
“There was no reason why he was head of Kenya Re. This man [Kenneth] is a total failure; he is selling beauty. Peter Kenneth has only been selling beauty in Kenya and I’m here to say we want leadership not beauty.”
But Kenneth hit out at Miguna stating that he has never stolen from the company at any one time.
He said that it is under his leadership that Kenya Re was listed as a public Company in the Nairobi Stock Exchange.
He jibed Miguna calling him a “motor mouth” and told him: “This rumor mongering will not help him. He needs to go out and campaign instead of rumor mongering.”
The four candidates were taken to taken to task on how each of them will address the hawkers menace, high license levies for business community among other things.
Sonko said that he has a plan to have the hawkers operate on certain streets at a given period of time, a concept he said he will borrow from Thailand.
He added that he will have licenses paid by hawkers and other small scale traders scrapped.
Kenneth said he will lower license charges as Kidero’s administration has hurt the business community by inordinately increasing the charges.