Dispatch from Mombasa

Gov. Joho and Kingi in a past press conference Last week two out of the six governors of the coast region declared that they would set in motion processes for the secession of the coast region. Mombasa Governor Ali Hassan Joho popularly known among his supporters as “ Sultan ” and Kilifi Governor Amasson Kingi declared that they wanted the region to secede based on the fact that the area “has been marginalized by successive governments and the only way to get out of the marginalization was to determine own destiny.” Secession talks are not a new thing at the coast of Kenya. In 2008, a separatist organization called the Mombasa Republican Council (MRC) pushed for the secession of the coast region citing an agreement between the Kenyan government and the Sultan of Zanzibar for the administration of the region for a period of 50 years. According to a Reuters(2012) report, the MRC claimed that they had “ … documents of a 1963 accord signed by then Kenyan Prime Minister and late