03/07/2026
Peace Without Accountability Is Just Politics
By Joseph Barasa
A leader cannot claim credit for calm that Police are restoring in Busia County while questions remain about his own record. To do so, many residents say, is political convenience from someone they regard as irredeemable.
Governor Paul Otuoma’s tenure, critics argue, raises accountability issues that go beyond the conduct of any single youth group, including the so-called ‘Jobless Group.’ In public debate, some residents have described him as a principal beneficiary of organized youth mobilization, with the Jobless Group cited as one example. They further state that the relationship collapsed after the election, after which the same youth were labeled “goons” and “outsiders.”
The second concern residents keep raising is market evictions. Traders say many livelihoods were disrupted after removals from business premises during his administration. There are also allegations, widely circulated in Busia town and on local social media, that some County officials later subdivided those spaces, erected County-branded kiosks, and sold them to new occupants for between Ksh 400,000 and Ksh 500,000, with some buyers said to be of Somali origin.
These eviction and reallocation claims are contested. The County has not released a public audit, allocation list, or court determination confirming or refuting the figures or buyers named in the allegations. Until such records are in the public domain, Busia is left with competing accounts and unresolved grievances.
That context is why attempts to take credit for Police-led order are meeting resistance. You cannot seek applause for peace while questions linger over how public space and political networks were managed.
Busia now needs three things: a full public accounting of market allocations and evictions, policing that is lawful and non-discriminatory, and politics that does not shift from mobilization to exclusion. Without that, any claim to peacemaking will read as convenience, not conviction.
