Bungoma Journalists on Wednesday 17 July 2024, embarrassed Governor Kenneth Lusaka when they walked out of his event in Mabanga.
Lusaka had gone to Mabanga Agricultural Centre to launch the KSh 105 million National Agricultural Value Chain Development Project (NAVCDP) aimed at benefiting approximately 227,000 smallholder farmers across 45 wards.
The scribes, drawn from different media outlets, staged the walk-out in protest of what they termed as “lies, mistreatment and disrespect by the County Executives”.
According to a member of the fourth estate who was part of the walk-out, the journalists who had turned up to cover the event just waited until all guests had addressed the gathering before they packed down their equipment and left, leaving Governor Lusaka’s address uncovered.
Later they held a meeting convened by CECM Kibunguchi to iron out issues.
The concerns raised by the journalists included:
▪️Failure to pay media and content creators at Madaraka Day celebrations despite allocation of money amounting to Ksh8 Million.
▪️ Failure by CECMs and COs to do rejoinders whenever reached out by the media.
▪️Lusaka’s failure to give 1million he promised the media fraternity
▪️Failure to facilitate them despite allocations to that regard to various function they get in
▪️Disrespect and mistreatment by Lusaka’s handlers .
This walk-out has exposed Governor Lusaka who on Friday, came out in a press conference to address concerns raised by Gen Z where he stated that his administration spent Ksh8 million on media mobilisation during the Madaraka Day celebrations in Bungoma.
The Bungoma Gen Z had on Tuesday, occupied county government and county assembly offices demanding for actions to be taken against rampant corruption cases in Lusaka’s regime.
Our efforts to reach out to the Governor for right of replay were futile as he did not pick nor respond to our SMS and WhatsApp reach-out by the time of pressing the P button for this article.
Lusaka has now come under public anger following his outrageous misuse of public resources that has seen him trend on X in bad light following yet another confession that he spent Sh25 million on decoration flowers during Madaraka Day celebrations.