As the country’s supremacy battle continues ahead of August polls, the Mau Forest politics have taken centre stage in campaigns with Deputy President (DP) William Ruto now accusing Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) leader Raila Odinga and his Azimio brigade of incitement over the Mau Forest in Narok.
Ruto said the former Prime Minister is inciting the communities and sowing tribal seeds against him over the contentious forest.
“I want to tell the Azimio people to stop incitement and look for an agenda to sell to the Narok people,” he said.
The DP said that the Mau Forest issue was now in the past and told the Azimio brigade not to cling to it for votes.
“What is remaining is fencing the forest and we settle the issue. We want to plan the development of Kenya and unite all Narok residents,” he said.
After the July 2005 infamous eviction, then Lands Minister Amos Kimunya said land to resettle evictees had been identified in Rongai in Nakuru.
But politicians led by Ruto who were then in opposition, led the squatters in refusing to relocate, arguing that land in Rongai was of low value and not as fertile as Mau.
Later in 2007 when President Kibaki was seeking re-election, new settlements sprung up with the government looking the other side, however, matters were made harder during the Kibaki succession politics.
In 2008, shortly after the formation of the government of national unity, former Odinga embarked on a mission to conserve the forest through compensating squatters who lay claim on some sections of the larger 480,000-hectare Mau complex to pave way for reclamation and rehabilitation.
Ruto opposed the eviction of illegal settlers to conserve the forest, a Cabinet decision that was spearheaded by Raila’s office when he was Prime Minister.
This certainly sunk Odinga’s presidential ambitions in 2013.
The Rift Valley was Odinga’s gift to power and because of the region’s total support in 2007 he had his best shot at the presidency.
The supremacy war between two former allies saw the two trade a series of accusations, which climaxed in Odinga sacking Ruto from the Cabinet because of the maize scandal.
Kibaki swiftly intervened and reinstated Ruto, who from there on started to turn Rift Valley against Odinga.
Ruto then teamed up with Uhuru Kenyatta in 2012 and, with that action, Raila painfully lost the populous region’s support.
Uhuru and Ruto then embarked on turning the ICC cases in their favour by painting Odinga as a puppet of the West as the three campaigned in 2013.
The plan to conserve the Mau Complex had three components.
The first aim was to stop deforestation of the Mau immediately, since the logging that was going on was unsustainable. The second objective was to reforest the Mau and the third and final part of the plan was to compensate genuine landowners or people like the Ogiek, who had lived in the forest for years.
Because the Prime Minister was leading the exercise, Ruto would go round the region telling his supporters how ungrateful Odinga was and why the region should stop supporting him.
Last month, Odinga accused Ruto of frustrating the government’s efforts to resettle Mau Forest evictees.
In 2019, the government evicted more than 35,000 people and reclaimed 40-hectare forest land – the country’s biggest water catchment area.
Ruto has, however, used it against Odinga asking him to stop politicising the Mau issue and instead come to the people of Narok with policies.