A suspended Nairobi county officer has sued governor Mike Sonko for Sh30 million claiming the governor defamed him.
County deputy director of legal services Newton Mungala filed a suit at Machakos court saying governor Sonko called him a land grabber, a statement he said was published in all the leading dailies in the country.
He said that on September 26 last year, the governor, who was barely a month in office, sent goons to his office at City Hall Annex and forcefully ejected him without notice.
Mungala says the goons told him they had been instructed to evict him for grabbing public land.
“Upon demanding proof of the allegation, the goons served me with a letter instructing me to go on compulsory leave. The letter did not indicate the duration of the leave nor the reason for proceeding on the leave”, the documents read.
He avers that Sonko denied him an opportunity to know the nature of the accusations, alleging that in subsequent press conferences, the governor issued press statements to the daily papers stating that he had sent him on compulsory leave over allegations of land grabbing.
Mungala says the publication was malicious and calculated to injure, disparage and lower the esteem with which right thinking members of the society regarded him.
Governor Sonko and the Daily Nation newspaper have been listed as first and second defendants in the suit.
