{"id":139393,"date":"2015-07-30T18:57:15","date_gmt":"2015-07-30T18:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=139393"},"modified":"2015-07-30T18:57:15","modified_gmt":"2015-07-30T18:57:15","slug":"kenyan-governor-denies-grass-removed-after-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2015\/07\/kenyan-governor-denies-grass-removed-after-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenyan governor denies grass removed after Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"
The governor of Kenya’s capital has denied that contractors are uprooting grass planted in Nairobi for US President Barack Obama’s visit.<\/p>\n
A video began circulating on social media on Thursday appearing to show workers in the city uprooting plants and alleging they were only on loan.<\/p>\n
But Nairobi governor Evans Kidero said a contractor was “restoring the ground in order to do the proper planting”.<\/p>\n
Mr Obama left Kenya on Sunday after his weekend visit.<\/p>\n
The governor’s efforts to plant grass along the roads only a few days before President Obama’s trip had previously been mocked on social media.<\/p>\n
The BBC’s Abdullahi Abdi in Nairobi says the governor spent about 50m Kenyan shillings ($488,000, \u00a3312,000) on giving the city a facelift, which included planting the grass.<\/p>\n
Last week, the governor used the hashtag #KideroGrass in a plea for people to avoid walking on the newly planted verges.<\/p>\n
It then began trending on Twitter, and even Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta got involved, joking: “Don’t worry: Plant it, it shall grow”, Kenya’s Capital TV reports.<\/p>\n
Governor Kidero used the hashtag again in his Facebook post on Thursday denying the accusation that plants were being uprooted.<\/p>\n
“NO ONE is uprooting \u202a#\u200eKideroGrass,” he said.<\/p>\n
“#KideroGrass is well on course, the quality of grass selected takes time to grow!” he added.<\/p>\n
One of the comments on his post said: “Governor please explain to me slooowly why the flowers were planted with polythene bags intact”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The governor of Kenya’s capital has denied that contractors are uprooting grass planted in Nairobi for US President Barack Obama’s visit. A video began circulating on social media on Thursday appearing to show workers in the city uprooting plants and alleging they were only on loan. But Nairobi governor Evans Kidero said a contractor was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":139394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[14],"yoast_head":"\n