NAIROBI SENATOR HAS SUED NAIROBI GOVERNOR

Mike Sonko, Nairobi senator has sued Dr Evans Kidero, Nairobi governor over a defamatory remark he reportedly made linking him to drug trafficking.

He wants Dr Kidero and a newspaper compelled to apologise and to be compensated for general damages for defamation and loss of reputation that the remarks caused.

The suit has been certified urgent and Dr Kidero is expected to put in a rebuttal on Thursday at the high court alongside a city newspaper which carried the story.

“The defendants jointly and severally have over the past few weeks engaged in a campaign against the plaintiff and have made defamatory, slanderous and scandalous allegations without any reasonable justification,” lawyer Danson Mungatana for the senator told the court.

The suit comes at the expiry of a demand notice the senator lodged against the governor in which he had given him a seven-day ultimatum to withdraw and publish an apology in the local press.

“The allegations are that the plaintiff is a drug peddler using his ambulances and hearses to supply drugs to slums,” the lawyer said.

“The allegations only serve to disparage the plaintiffs reputation and will continue to cause injury unless the defendants are restrained through a court order,” the lawyer said.

He claimed that due to the publication of the story Sonko had already started incurring “huge loses” as some of his contracts for provision of charitable assistance to the needy have been cancelled while others are at risk of being terminated.

Sonko now wants the court to find the remarks defamatory and punish Kidero and the newspaper. He is also seeking the costs of the case.

Mr Mungatana has annexed a newspaper cut out headlined “Kidero says Sonko is drug dealer” to prove his case.

“I believe that any person who heard Dr Kidero speak during the function at Mathare could easily have connected the same newspaper report with a intention to destroy our young generation instead of providing them with mentorship and socio-economic empowerment,” Sonko states in an affidavit presented to the court.

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