Raila footed my Sh1 million hospital bill- Man injured during anti-IEBC protests

 I spent nine days in hospital and Raila visited me every morning and evening-Japheth Moroko

Japheth Moroko shot into limelight after musing up the “Baba While You Were Away” lamentation that Kenyans on Twitter turned into a viral hashtag to welcome Cord leader, Raila Odinga to Kenya from his three-month break in the USA in 2014.

And when Moroko was clobbered by police during Cord demos against IEBC on May 16, the former Prime Minister settled his hospital bill amounting close to close to a million shillings, he claims.

The 35-year-old claims he was grazed by a bullet on the head then beaten by a cop as he ran to safety. Bloody and disoriented, he was reportedly rushed to Nairobi Hospital by Raila and Senators Johnson Muthama and James Orengo.

“After the attack, I called Raila who told me to meet them at a city hotel where they were having lunch. When he saw how bloody I was, they left their meals and rushed me to hospital,” claims Moroko, adding that, “Before we got to the hospital, Raila had organised three doctors, six nurses and 24-hour security for me. I spent nine days there and he visited me every morning and evening.”

Moroko, a miraa businessman and activist is the great grandson of the late Mau Mau Field Marshall Musa Mwariama from Tigania, Meru County. The freedom fighter was with Field Marshall Dedan Kimathi during the war of independence. Mwariama died in 1989 in Ukambani after he sucked poison out of the leg of a friend who had been bitten by a snake.

It was the government’s abandonment of the freedom fighter that made him align himself to Raila’s political ideologies. “My great grandfather and the rest of us in his lineage have been loyal supporters of Jaramogi Oginga and his son Raila’s ideologies. We mobilised ‘Odingaism’ across Meru since the 1970s, though the Odinga family did not know us,” he says.