Lo Nadi Ethnic Conflict Analysis

The 1969 the Nandi Hills Declarations authored by Joseph K. Mitei challenged the Kenyatta government of settling non-Kalenjin’s at the expense of the former owners to land that belonged to the Nandi that had been taken by the white settlers (Daily Nation, 1969). This meeting held in Nandi Hills was championed and attended by radical political leaders who were upset about the invasion of other ethnic communities who were considered to be outsiders in their ancestral land (Oyugi, 2000, p. 7).
In 1991/2 the Luo-Nandi ethnic conflict which broke out coincided with the introduction of multiparty politics in Kenya, although according to oral history, the two ethnic communities have been at loggerheads since time immemorial and this has been established
The conflict between the Luo and Nandi communities is credited to the agitation of the introduction of political pluralism in Kenya. Oyugi (1998) believes that the 1991/2 ethnic violence was due to the manipulation of Kenyans by those who were in leadership as they rallied support for the competition of power and wealth. He credits the roots of ethnicity in Kenya to the divide and rule card which was played by colonialists. Some of the policies pursued by the colonial regime fostered group manipulation which birthed primordial thought patterns of thinking about other ethnic groups. A prime example is the mass migration of communities to give room for white settlement in fertile land in Nandi, Laikipia, Kiambu, Bungoma, Kisumu and Nyeri. Such a policy polarized ethnic groups and fostered ethnic violence in the early 1990s in the Rift Valley, Central and Western parts of Kenya during and after the 1992 multiparty elections. During this period the Kalenjin, Maasai, Turkana and Samburu (KAMATUSA) tried to forcibly drive out the Luo, Kikuyu and Luhya ethnic communities who they accused of denying them a chance of acquiring power and land in their land (Oyugi, 2000, pp. 7-8). As the tensions along Kisumu and Kericho counties intensified and concentrated along the borders, “The Luo community felt that the police sided with
It would be noteworthy to indicate the various parliamentary committees set up to look into these conflicts. Eg, the government has in the past appointed parliamentary select committees. Issues of power and resources are given as reasons for the conflict by the Kiliku Parliamentary Select Committee. The Committee emphasizes that the government was a contributor of the ethnic clashes rather than playing a pivotal role in managing the conflicts. The report points out that the government desired to attain political mileage out of the ethnic clashes via violence as a political instrument. Ethnic violence was used to destabilize regions in the Rift Valley, this was coupled with resentment over unresolved boundary and land issues.
Gecaga (2001) postulates that, ethnic conflicts are due to estrangement over uneven sharing of resources taken during the colonial era among ethnic communities which lived in the former Western, Central and Rift Valley provinces. These ethnic tensions were intensified after independence due to the politicization of ethnicity. She posits that ethnic conflicts are also a by-product of intolerance and criminality (pp.