The scramble for the Kuria community votes in Migori county has been stepped up between Cord and Jubilee.
Data from the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission indicates Kuria West subcounty has 43,000 voters, while Kuria East has 30,061 voters.
In 2013, Raila Odinga helped engineer a power-sharing deal between the Kuria and Luo communities to ensure they vote for Cord as a bloc. The two major alliances ended up sharing votes equally. Cord suffered a blow as the Kuria West MP seat was won by URP’s Mathias Robi and Kanu’s Shadrack Manga won in Kuria East.
Robi has been the JAP point man in Kuria by pushing the development agenda and bringing peace among Kuria’s four clans of Abairege, Abagumbe, Abanyabasi and Abakira.
“JAP is the strongest party in the Kuria community and we will ensure we use the community as a springboard to get 25 per cent presidential vote in the county,” he said. Robi said through JAP the Kuria community has had major allocations in CDF, plum state jobs and development projects like the tarmacking of Migori-Kehancha and Isebania-Kehancha roads. “It is only through being close to the government that we have two colleges in Kuria – KMTC at Kehanche and TTI in Mabera,” he said.
