Hours after Raila Odinga announced Radio Africa under some companies that his Azimio supporters should boycott, renowned media personality and former employee of Nation Media Group Gordon Opiyo has broken his silence.
In a long Facebook post accompanied by a screenshot from one of the leading newspapers, Opiyo claimed that Raila’s announcement to have his supporters boycott the paper is not related to the reasons he gave.
He claimed that Raila’s war on Radio Africa which owns The Star Newspaper, Radio Jambo, Kiss FM and Classic 105 is nothing closer to what the paper reports, rather has a deeper connection to business competition.
According to Opiyo, Raila is just an agent of SK Machariah, whom he said is a businessman whose businesses under Royal Media are facing stiff competition from Radio Africa’s products.
“If it comes to reporting, there is nothing unusual that the Star, Classic 105 and Kiss FM have said. Nothing new, nothing out of the ordinary to annoy anyone. If they had reported anything negative about the man from Mumias, this page would have picked it up, since this page gets attracted to any reporting that says the truth about the man from Mumias…” claimed Opiyo
He said the competition for radio frequencies between Radio Africa stations and Royal Media stations is the major reason why Machariah could have approached Raila to help him marshal supporters to boycott competitor’s products.
“Now, Tables have turned.. And SK is due to lose several frequencies that host Radio Citizen, Hot 96, Ramogi FM, Inooro FM, Mulembe FM and Egesa FM.. So, what does this mean? He orders his hireling to start a trade war with Radio Africa, the biggest competitor to his brands…
This war against Radio Africa has nothing to do with anything wrong they reported… But it is a business rivalry between SK Macharia and Patrick Quarcoo of Radio Africa. Do you now get the context?” posed Opiyo.
He went ahead to post a past story from Business Daily, showing that SK Macharia’s Royal Media had lost frequencies interference appeal in court.
In the 2020 July story, the Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal by Royal Media Services (RMS) challenging a directive by the communications regulator eight years ago requiring the broadcaster to stop interfering with frequencies allocated to other media houses.
While calling for the boycott, Odinga did not elaborate on the alleged partisanship by the three entities, but only insisted that “we have the details why are saying so and our supporters will understand.”
Content created and supplied by: NRMedia (via Opera
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