Reproduced below is Stephen Muiruri's detailed resignation letter. It speaks volumes;
Stephen Muiruri
P.O Box 872 City Square
Nairobi
February 2, 2007
Group Human Resources Manager
Nation Media Group
P.O Box 49010 GPO
Nairobi.
Dear Madam,
RE: RESIGNATION
I wish to inform you that I have decided to tender my resignation from Nation Media Group with immediate effect. This letter comes into effect from the time and date signed below.
I arrived at this decision after careful consideration of various issues and after wide consultations.
After the meeting we had with the CEO, Mr Linus Gitahi, and several other top managers in the afternoon yesterday, the Group Editotial Director, Mr Wangethi Mwangi, sent me a memo in which two serious allegations were leveled against me.
I had gone to Mr Gitahi to express some concerns about my work and issues touching on my personal safety and that of my family. To my surprise, the meeting was turned into a lynch forum and the genuine issues that I had raised were swept under the carpet and other unrelated issues cropped up. I believe that any employer, just like a responsible father, would pay serious attention to issues of the same nature that I raised and try to come up with a solution. I believe that am right when I saw Mr Gitahi has encouraged any employee to visit his office on any issue.
For my case, he called me on the very first day he reported to Nation Centre and expressed confidence in my work, assured me of his total support and told me I was always free to see him on any issue. Mr Gitahi has repeated the same message during my subsequent meetings with him or when he met other members of staff. It was, therefore, surprising that a genuine concern was sidelined and the tables were turned on me with allegations that have no legitimate foundation.
In his memo, Mr Mwangi accused me of two things. First, he asked me to respond to an unspecified issue I’m alleged to have done on December 21, 2006, which he claimed contravened my terms of employment with the Nation Media Group. Secondly, he claimed that the circumstances and “facts surrounding the purchase of a motor vehicle by yourself from the police” point to a conflict of interest.
When I went through my records last night, I found out that on December 21, 2006, I placed an advert that appeared in the Daily Nation the next day seeking employees for my tour firm. I paid for the advert and the receipts are available. How that contravened my terms of employment remains a puzzle to me.
On the second issue, the said “facts” are a complete distortion of the truth. A detailed report I voluntarily gave to and the Group Security Manager, Mr Sam Koskei, and the official Government records and newspapers that advertised the public auction that resulted in the sale of the motor vehicle, contains hard facts. Yet, somebody wants to twist the facts to suit an intended objective – to portray me as a dishonest person not suitable to hold any position at Nation Media Group.
The facts of the matter in the report have not changed and it’s my honest opinion that I did not use my position at NMG in conflict with company rules and regulations. The said vehicle was put out for sale in a public auction, advertised in the national newspapers and all the procurement procedures were legally followed. There are no regulations at NMG or any laws in Kenya which bar relatives of NMG employees from purchasing items put up on sale in a public auction.
Yesterday’s turn of events did not come as a surprise to me. I have been aware that the police commissioner, Maj Gen Hussein Ali, has been applying pressure on senior managers at NMG to have me sacked because of the coverage of crime and security stories. He is also on record calling on NMG management to take steps against me over a story I had written over the post of CID director.
Although the commissioner issues a statement, full of abusive language, and was categorical the story was total lies and my own imagination, my forthrightness and accuracy of my information I had published was vindicated two weeks later when one of the three people I had mentioned in my story as having been short-listed for the job of CID Director was appointed to the post. No one offered me any apology for the insults that were hurled at me and Daily Nation boasted about how the Sunday Nation had broken the story in an exclusive report.
I have been made aware that Maj Gen Ali has been digging information about my wealth and in particular the motor vehicle that Mr Mwangi referred to. Everything I own is not a secret and anyone wishing to access it is free to visit the relevant Government departments to quench their curiosity. Is it then a coincidence that the events of yesterday have no relation to the malicious campaign that Maj Gen Ali has been waging on me after I refused to tow his line of turning a blind eye on the insecurity gripping the country? I have discharged my duties professionally and made NMG proud by outshining our competitors in the coverage of crime and security issues. I have done so accurately and objectively.
Despite pressure from Maj Gen Ali, I refused to compromise my professional ethics and this resulted in a vicious campaign to have me out of NMG. Why should I not inform Kenyans when people are being killed every day? I have taken this bold move of resigning because I have a reputation to protect and I can’t compromise my principles by being part of a group that wants to cover up the truth for their own selfish interests.
I believed the NMG management sacrificed me at the alter of personal interests and to please Maj Gen Ali. The baseless allegations that have been leveled against me are only a ploy to cover up the real issues of the behind-the-scene maneuvers to edge me out of NMG. Evil will never defeat the good. Who are my accusers? I walk out of Nation Centre holding my head high and without a grain of dirt or being involved in any scandal. I’m proud of the achievements I have made, both at the personal and professional level. I take pride that assembled together a Crime Desk at NMG from scratch and it has remained a national and global authority in the coverage of crime and security matters.
I don’t regret my departure today from NMG since I have never been afraid to leave the company. I have always believed there is life beyond NMG and I was well prepared for it. Those who thought that my departure will ever kill my spirit and determination in life are mistaken. God is my future. My conscience is clean and those who take pride in the misery they bring upon innocent colleagues and hoped to use my downfall to deflate or divert the dark clouds currently hanging over their heads should know that their ploy is a major flop. I repeat again, who are my accusers? Between myself and them, who has soiled hands?
The only issue that I would wish to point out is that malice and witch-hunt will never take this company anywhere. But I take solace in the Bible which states that those who kill by the sword also die by the sword. And I also take solace in the words of William Shakespeare who said that the evils that men do live long after they are dead. God will one day hear the cries of the silent majority who have been suffering for long or have been forced out of this great company through witch-hunt and evils perpetuated by a small clique of managers who have been using their positions as a tool of oppression.
There only pending business I have with the NMG is the case at the High Court regarding the Koinange Street story touching on three MPs. I will have no problem being called as a NMG witness and I can be contacted on the above postal address.
I wish to humbly request you to urgently accept my resignation and process the benefits entitled to me to enable me start the process of clearing from the company as soon as possible.
Yours sincerely,
Stephen Muiruri
Exclusive kumekucha interview with John Troon, the man who investigated the Ouko murder reveals that there is enough evidence to convict.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Crime Editor Muiruri's Letter Protesting Incident He Claims Was Hatched To Embarrass Him At NMG
I reproduce Crime Editor Muiruri's Letter Protesting Incident He Claims Was Hatched To Embarrass Him At NMG
February 18, 2007
Mr Linus Gitahi
Group Chief Executive Officer
Nairobi Media Group
P.O Box 49010-00100
NAIROBI
Dear Sir,
RE: PROTEST LETTER
I wish to register my disgust to an incident, which happened to me at around 3pm on Friday, February 16, 2007, at Nation Centre. After I had finished clearing the previous day, I was asked by the accounts staff to collect my cheque on this Friday afternoon. I reported at the 5th floor at the agreed time and we had heartily greetings and talks with the accounts staff.
I was informed there was one signatory who was yet to append his signature and we agreed that I should wait. I then borrowed a copy of the day’s Standard newspaper from one of the staff and rested in one of the chairs.
I had not even known what the headline on the newspaper was before the deputy security manager and a watchman came running, panting and sweating profusely to where I was. After deputy security manager regained his breadth, he politely asked me why I was inside Nation Centre. The two guys looked badly shaken. I told him I had come to collect my cheque and he asked me to accompany him to his office on 4th floor. I obeyed.
On reaching his office, the deputy security manager, who was still sweating, asked me again what I was doing in Nation Centre. I explained my mission. He asked me to give him my staff ID card but I told him I would do so after I had collected my cheque. I asked him to call the cash office and find out if what I had told him was true. After the call, the deputy security manager relaxed and explained to me why he had come running and expressed deep shock and regret that he had been misled.
He told me he had been hurriedly summoned from another place back to Nation Centre and informed that I was causing trouble on the 5th floor and that there were fears that a fight had broken out in the office of the Group Human Resources Director, Mrs Helen Mbugua. I had not even gone to that side and Helen’s office was more than 100 metres from where I was being attended to by the account’s staff. But the deputy security manager was very understanding and he did not harass me at all.
Although he did not tell me who had given him the misleading report, I gathered the episode had been stage-managed by one of the managers and the intention was for me to be embarrassed by being frog-matched out of Nation Centre. Their intentions backfired since I chased away the watchman who kept standing behind me and I asked the deputy security manager to remain with me as I went to collect my cheque. I also asked him to escort me outside so that he can know I had no other mission in Nation Centre. The only sad thing was that Mr Atebe ended up not endorsing my cheque for cashing within NMG due to the security scare.
I know the bitterness in the mouths of a small clique of top managers arose when I tendered my resignation on February 2, 2007, after my reputation and integrity was unfairly questioned by none other by yourself and the Editorial Director, Mr Wangethi Mwangi. Subsequently, I wrote a letter to all the Editorial Staff, which I circulated in the internal email network, and copied the same to you, explaining in details the senseless campaign you and Mr Mwangi had launched against me, together with the police commissioner, Maj Gen Hussein Ali, to force me out of my job as the Crime Editor of the Nation Media Group. I also exposed the lies behind the campaign and shared with the staff some sensitive secrets they had never known. As I had expected, this put a bitter taste in your mouth and Mr Mwangi.
But I did not expect the pettiness and emptiness I saw on Friday. Am aware that some enthusiastic managers who are desperately trying to catch your eye, either to remain relevant, to avoid the axe or to wish away the sex scandals that are threatening to ruin their lives have been trying to outdo each other to please you. But I did not expect anyone to sink so low. Telling lies that I was making trouble is the height of mediocrity and absurdity.
I wish to state very clearly that I have no personal or professional dispute with Helen that I would provoke me to fight her. I have never interacted with her at all since she joined NMG. I have no issue that would make me cause trouble for any other employee of NMG or any person outside Nation Centre.
I take great exception to the primitive way some of your managers choose to conduct business. I wish they would have told me to wait for my cheque outside and I would have obeyed. Mr Gitahi, what is so special and precious with the oxygen that is within Nation Centre that anyone would imagine that anyone not working for NMG would die if they did not breathe it? Excuse me please. I have not died since I resigned three weeks ago.
I have every right to come and collect all the monies that NMG owes me. That’s not a favour and it’s not negotiable. This was a clear case of unwarranted provocation and an affront to my rights and reputation.
However, I wish to inform you that I have finished clearing from NMG and I take great exception to the whole affair that led to my resignation from this great company. Let me make it clear that I’m not seeking sympathy I return. No. Am comfortable in whatever am doing currently. Honestly, I was absolutely fed up with working for a thankless employer. I strongly believe that it’s you who require deep sympathy and prayers for being a puppet of selfish people and dancing to their whims at the expense of your loyal and hardworking staff.
As I stated in my resignation letter and the other letter I wrote and circulated to my fellow journalists on February 3, 2007, I did not regret leaving NMG. However, I took great exception to the way you handled the whole issue right from the time you reported to Nation Centre on November 1, 2006, up to the meeting in your office on February 1, 2007, which you turned into a forum to lynch me and ended up resulting in my resignation the following morning.
On the very first day you reported to Nation Centre, you called me from the blues and expressed your “total support” for me for my impressive performance. In your own words, you said you had been reading my stories for a long time and you were impressed by my writing style and boldness. You further stated that you knew reporting on security was not an easy task due to the security implications involved. Alas! I found an angel in you and I told you I felt so humbled that an outsider could come from nowhere and appreciate my work.
You landed in Nation Centre when I was going through one of the most difficult periods of my life and in my journalism profession and I was contemplating to resign. I told you so during my first meeting with you in your new office. The reason I had not quit was because your predecessor, Mr Wilfred Kiboro, had offered me genuine and unwavering support.
When the NMG Board announced Mr Kiboro’s retirement, I saw a dark cloud hang over my head and I knew the sharks in NMG and in police headquarters, who had since 2005 been baying for my blood for refusing to censor or tone down the reporting of crime stories for their selfish and personal reasons, were now rejoicing and waiting in the sidelines to swallow me.
The campaign to remove me from my job was kicked off by Maj Gen Ali when he called me to his office trying to prevail upon me to stop exposing the real issues behind the scandal that had been exposed by the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission on the recruitment of new police officers. I refused to bend to his wishes and continued exposing those behind the scandal and the lies that Maj Gen Ali had told Kenyans that he had interdicted 175 officers in charge of the recruitment. Not a single officer was sent home. I promptly informed Mr Mwangi about the meeting I had with Maj Gen Ali and the veiled threats he issued to me in his office for refusing to do what he wanted. I informed him verbally and followed it up with an email. Mr Mwangi was part of the campaign.
The well-calculated campaign to have me fired from NMG is well documented in a detailed report I wrote to Mr Mwangi, dated 24, 2007, in response to foul comments he had written to me, appearing to give credence to a misleading and insulting claims against me contained in a statement faxed to all media houses by Maj Gen Ali. I also sent a copy of my report to Mr Kiboro and gave you the same when I first met you in your new office two weeks after you had reported.
But in brief, Maj Gen Ali had on October 22, 2006, issued a statement in response to an exclusive article I had written in the Sunday Nation revealing that three top security chiefs had been short-listed from the post of the CID Director upon the imminent retirement of the then suspended CID chief, Mr Joseph Kamau, Using unpalatable and abusive language, Maj Gen Ali dismissed the entire story as total lies and my own imagination. He went a step further to demand that NMG management should “take the necessary steps” against me for what he termed my “ill-motivated writing.”.
When the statement landed on Mr Mwangi’s desk, he, too, wrote some fouls comments suggesting that I was manufacturing stories and that the reputation of NMG was at stake due to my journalism. He even questioned the credibility of my sources even before he had called me to give my account. It was a clear case of a seasoned editor abandoning his flock and openly siding with external forces for purely personal reasons. It’s then that I decided to write a detailed report to Mr Mwangi explaining that I stood by my story, how I sourced it and specified the number of times Maj Gen Ali had called me to his office trying to arm-twist me to censor crime stories.
But my God did not abandon me. The story that was being discredited by Maj Gen Ali and his new-found friend, Mr Mwangi, with insults and verbal diarrhea was vindicated when, two weeks later, the Head of Civil Service, Mr Francis Muthaura, announced the appointment of Mr Gatiba Karanja, as the new CID Director on November 14. When the Daily Nation splashed the story on Mr Karanja’s appointment, it took boasted on page one how its sister paper had broken the exclusive story. I was deeply overjoyed because Maj Gen Ali and Mr Mwangi’s insults had been put to shame.
I then wrote an email to Mr Mwangi telling him of my joy and my prayer that no other NMG journalist should ever be accused of manufacturing a story by their bosses before they were given a hearing. As I expected, my email did not attract a response from Mr Mwangi. But I knew he was bitter because things did not work out as he had hoped. He had hoped to use the story to discredit me but his plans were ashamed by the accuracy of my reporting and the credibility of my sources. Up to this day, I have never known why Mr Mwangi has been siding with the commissioner while he knew there was no truth in the lies that he was being fed. But now that am free of the newsroom hustles, I believe I can use my investigations skills to find out the real truth.
Every time I wrote a story Maj Gen Ali did not like or he imagined I was about to write (he must be super-human to read other people’s thoughts in advance!), he would call Mr Mwangi to lodge a complain. When I met Mr Kiboro in his office before he retired, he candidly told me, in the presence of the Group Managing Editor, Mr Joseph Odindo, that he had no time for Maj Gen Ali and that he (commissioner) gave up calling him when he ignored his tiring demands and endless complaints. But that did not deter Maj Gen Ali for he found a shoulder to lean on in Mr Mwangi.
For instance, on January 16, 2006, Mr Mwangi wrote an email to me stating and I quote: “By the way, the Police Commissioner called to ask why we appear to be targeting him. He believes we’re being used to undermine him and mentioned a story that someone is writing about his incomplete house in Karen and something about his wife, ete. Do you know anything about this?
I replied to Mr Mwangi and informed him that Maj Gen Ali had in the past called me to his office trying to manipulate and influence our coverage of crime and security stories. I told him that it was after I refused to bend to the commissioner’s whims that he started engaging in a smear campaign with a clear intention to discredit me and my stories and ruin me. I was aware about the issues Mr Mwangi was asking me but I won’t discuss them here for legal reasons and for my own personal safety. But you can refer to the report I handed to Mr Mwangi and Mr Kiboro since the issues are well explained.
After I replied to Mr Mwangi’s email and explained in details the desperate attempts by Maj Gen Ali to arm-twist me and NMG, Mr Mwangi replied thus: Thanks for this. It’s of great help and I can now see the whole picture. At some point, it might become necessary to do a thorough piece on the rivalries in the police department and how that might be impacting on service delivery. Your approach to depersonalize your stories is sound. Let’s continue dealing with issues.” I replied to him and told him that I would take up the new assignment he had tasked me to do. As you’ll find out below, that was my undoing. I was being led to a trap by Mr Mwangi the same way you, Mr Gitahi, came to NMG pretending to be an angle, only for you to display your true colours and hypocracy on the afternoon of February 1, 2007.
While other media houses shied away from exposing the truth behind the raid on Standard newspapers newsroom and the people behind it, those behind the presence of the Artur brothers in the country, sharp divisions in the Kenya Police, the boardroom rows between Maj Gen Ali and Mr Kamau, and on the other hand the rows between Maj Gen Ali and his immediate boss, Internal Security minister, Mr John Michuki, and other behind-the-scenes happenings in the force, I took up the challenge Mr Mwangi had given me and came up with exclusive stories that kept Kenyans informed on what was going on in the security agencies. This is what infuriated Maj Gen Ali to the breaking point.
The above example was not the first time Maj Gen Ali was demanding my sacking from NMG. The first time he did so was in a letter dated September 11, 2006, in a letter he addressed to Managing Editor of the Daily Nation, Mr Bernard Nderitu,
However, a copy of the September 11 letter was secretly faxed to me by a senior police officer, since I was not meant to see it. In the letter, Maj Gen Ali had taken issue with another story I had written in the Sunday Nation on how police lost good cases in court due to shoddy investigations or due to professional negligence brought about by tempering with scenes of crime. I had interviewed some of Kenya’s best experts in law and forensic science to enrich my story. Although the September 11 letter was clearly addressed to Managing Editor of the Daily Nation, it’s still mysterious how Mr Mwangi intercepted the letter while he was on leave and forwarded it Mr Odindo, with some comments on top asking him to act on it. To date, Mr Nderitu has never been formally given the letter that was clearly addressed to him. He knew there was such a letter when I made a copy from my own letter. I, too, would never have known about such a letter were it not for my good and reliable contacts within the Kenya Police. My good friend Mr Odindo was shocked that I had obtained the letter before NMG management got their copy. I explained to him that that was part of my work and that was why I was then the only Crime Editor in Kenya. He demanded that I should surrender to him the copy I had arguing the letter was not meant for me. Since I did not want to annoy my friend, I made a copy and gave him the copy he wanted. I kept mine secretly.
It’s the September 11 letter that led to the meeting I have spoken about above between Mr Kiboro, Mr Odindo and myself. Although Mr Odindo expressed disgust in the innuendos and barbaric language used by Maj Gen Ali, he frankly told me that his hands were tied and I could see the fear that was in his eyes due to Mr Mwangi’s shadow. He was of the view that NMG should ignore replying to the letter. But I stood my ground that I would do it personally if NMG management did not wish to defend one of their own against unwarranted provocation and deliberate insults.
I was being insulted and my reputation questioned by a police commissioner because I had refused to clean his mess and for serving my employer diligently and faithfully. Crime reporting is one of the riskiest jobs in any media house anywhere in the world. I took up the crime job when the killing of two robbery suspects in a day captured headlines. But revolutionalised crime reporting and set very high standards, which am so proud of.
I approached the NMG management with an idea to set up a vibrant crime desk, which they endorsed. I started from scratch and formed a Crime Section that was the envy of other media houses and it became an authority in reporting of crime and security matters in the region. Foreign journalists wanting to follow up a major security issue in Kenya turned to me and NMG and not NMG rivals. I left NMG a proud journalist for the achievements I made. The killing of two robbery suspects today doesn’t capture a headline or a page lead.
Back to the issue of our meeting with Mr Kiboro, the CEO then instructed Mr Odindo to reply to Maj Gen Ali’s letter and tell him NMG management took great exception to his wild claims and ask him to provide any evidence of my impropriety if he had any to allow them take action. Mr Odindo did not write the letter. He only did so two weeks later after I had reminded him several times and cupped it with an email dated September 28, 2006, telling him I would personally reply to Maj Gen Ali’s abusive letter if he was finding it hard to do it for fear of antagonizing his friend, Mr Mwangi.
His reply letter was surprisingly addressed to Police Spokesman, Mr Gideon Kibunjah, and not to the commissioner. And the content was meant to placate the commissioner and did not touch on the issues Mr Kibori had raised. But I personally told Mr Odindo that I understood he was in a catch 22 for he did not want to antagonize himself with Mr Mwangi. I have no problem with Mr Odindo and I’ll always regard him as a dear and genuine friend. I have a lot of respect for him. I believe he has a good heart but he attracts unpopularity in the newsroom due to his association with Mr Mwangi.
So, when you arrived at Nation Centre on November 1, 2006, and placed a call to me, I felt relieved and thought Mr Mwangi’s joy that I had been left badly exposed by Mr Kiboro’s departure was short-lived. I promptly informed Mr Odindo and Mr Nderitu of your surprise telephone call and the nice things you had told me. Today, I know you gave me false hopes as you led me to a slaughterhouse with your sly smile!
Before you were one week old in NMG, my police contacts promptly warned me that you were a leopard in a sheep’s skin cautioned me you were up to no good.
First, the police contacts informed me that you had met Maj Gen Ali, through a meeting that had been arranged by Ms Rose Kimotho, and the agenda of the meeting was that I was a thorn in the flesh for the commissioner and you were to fire me on arrival at NMG. That explains why you knew there was a Stephen Muiruri in NMG and the reason I was the first employee to receive your call and the first employee to be shown the door by you.
I gathered your meeting with the commissioner was held in October, soon after the NMG Board announced Mr Kiboro’s retirement and that you were taking over. So, it was clear in my mind even when I had met you personally that you had started transacting NMG business long you reported to NMG and the axe was going to fall on my head any time. You are a very clever guy. You started counting the chicken before they are hatched. I have since made further inquiries and found out what links the three of you; Ms Kimotho, Maj Gen Ali and yourself. But that matter is beyond this forum.
The contacts told me that the commissioner had given you a lot of dossier about me and two issues had emerged during your secret meeting:
- That I own a tours and safaris company.
- That I was among people who had allegedly bought one of the 400 vehicles that had been sold by the Kenya Police through a public auction in 2005.
I was informed these were the grounds you were to use to fire me. Since you had told me during the telephone conversation on November 1, 2006, that I was free to see you in your office if I had any issue I wanted to discuss with you, I took up the challenge and walked right to your office in the third week of you being in Nation Centre.
Although you were uneasy and shaky when I candidly asked you if it was true that you had met Maj Gen Ali before you reported to NMG and that I was the subject of the discussion, you confirmed it was true. I congratulate you for being a gentleman and honest up to that level. You further said you detested the approach by Maj Gen Ali since you had been tricked it was a lunch date. You further told me that Maj Gen Ali had quickly called you when you reported to apologise to you for tabling NMG matters in such a forum and before you had taken up the job.
I then explained most of the issues I have talked about above and how I had been under intense pressure from Maj Gen Ali to compromise my professional ethics for his own selfish gains. I told you it was his desire that we did not cover crime so that it would look like crime went drastically down during his tenure. I also informed you that I felt exposed because I strongly believed Mr Mwangi, who was then my boss, could appear to be siding with the outsiders instead of his own staff. As I told you then, I still stand by my statement that by being part of the cover up, we would be splashing our hands with the blood of innocent people who are daily being butchered by thugs. And I could not be part of the cover up.
I also gave you original documents of the vehicle that I was alleged to have bought from the police. I also gave you three different newspapers which carried the notice for the public auction. I then gave you a detailed account of the transactions, who the buyer of was and how I came into the picture. I later did a voluntary report on the vehicle issue and explained the same facts. The facts have not changed and they are also contained in the letter I circulated to my colleagues via the Editorial email when I resigned. I also copied the same letter to you.
Though the buyers name and particulars are clearly visible for the official records from the Kenya Police, the auctioneer and Kenya Revenue Authority, you, Mr Mwangi and Mr Koskei twisted facts to suit an intended agenda – to portray me as dishonest and not suitable to hold by position of Crime Editor at NMG. The auction was done in an open and transparent manner and the records clearly show who the buyer was. I brought the documents because I knew Mr Koskei was hunting in the darkness and I wanted to help him speed up the investigations he thought he was doing secretly without my knowledge. I had known long before that he was investigating me.
During our meeting, you then repeated that I had your total backing and you gave me your cellphone number and asked me to call you whenever Mr Mwangi or any other senior editor planned to kill my stories or over any other issue. I did not misuse my closeness with you even for a single second. In some of the times you bumped into me in the streets, you often asked why I had shied away from your office. I did that out of respect and since I could not take advantage of my knowing you to be frequenting your office unnecessarily.
Before you addressed a staff meeting on 3rd floor on February 1, 2007, over the anonymous letters that have been circulating on the alleged sex scandals involving senior managers, you wandered through the crowd and came to where I was seated. I had not seen you coming only that I heard your deep voice when you called my name from behind. I woke and warmly shook your hand. You said you had not seen me for a while and wondered why I had not been to your office even to say jambo. I reminded you that I had bumped into you a week ago while both of us were walking along Moi Avenue and we had a chat. However, I told you I would find time to pop into your office that afternoon.
I had an issue I first wanted to clear with you when I turned up in your office that afternoon. I wanted to clear the issue of story I had written in the Daily Nation more than a week ago on the sharp rise in extra-judicial killings, and which I had been informed by Mr Nderitu that you had taken issue with. He said he had bumped into you on the stairs while going to see Mr Mwangi over the story. Just like Maj Gen Ali, you were not taking any particular issue with the facts in the story. Everything in the story was factual and it was balanced. I even had comments from police headquarters. You were only questioning WHY I had written the story. You claimed that we were being insensitive to the police since they had been killed and you claimed we had not reported about it. You were jumping into an issue from a point of ignorance and I took time to explain to you why you were dead wrong.
I explained that we had reported incidents when police officers had been killed. And I told you we had planned to carry a special report on police officers killed in the line of duty on January 20, 2007. But the story could not see the light of the day because Mr Kibunjah told us that Maj Gen Ali had warned him not to give us the photos of the slain officers to accompany the story. I told you we only had five photos and the Managing Editor for Saturday Nation had said they would not serve the purpose he had intended. He then postponed the publication of the story.
I then told you that the story on extra-judicial killing was supposed to ran a day after we carried the story on the slain officers. It was to be published on January 21, 2007. However, that was not to be. There was a serious technical problem with the computer network that Saturday and the Sunday Nation team explained they could not access the stories which were already in the computers. I called Mr Nderitu on Sunday and he agreed to use the story the following day, January 22, 2007.
Mr Nderiru had informed me that as a result of the concerns you had expressed over the story, Mr Mwangi and Mr Odindo had given him instructions that my stories should not be published until the two (Mr Mwangi and Mr Odindo) cleared them. I told him that I would continue ignore their directives since they were made in the backstreets and were not communicated to me either verbally or in writing. I could not understand why such a rule had to be crafted purposely for me and not any other journalist. It was a deliberate move to frustrate me and render me unproductive so that Mr Mwangi could use the excuse to declare me redundant.
I, therefore, told you that the two had misinterpreted your comments and I humbly asked you to set the records straight I also told you that I feared for my life and that of my family if NMG managers would collude with outsiders for purely personal reasons and sacrifice the company’s reputation and independence. What couldn’t they do to somebody they thought stood between them and their personal desires and ambitions? You did not answer that question.
You then tricked me that you were going to call the two editors so that we could resolve the issue once and for all. You walked to your secretary and in under three minutes, six top managers trooped to your office and they were panting. It looked like they had been told there was an emergency. In came Mr Mwangi, Mr Odindo, Mr Nderitu, the Group Security Manager, Mr Sam Koskei, Mr Dennis Aluanga (whatever his title is), and Mrs Mbugua of HR.
As soon as they sat down, I saw another Gitahi I had not known. You suddenly turned hostile and at one time, I thought your big eyes would prop out of the sockets because of the way you were staring at me, hatred and deed anger written all over your face. You then unleashed the six managers and yourself against me and you and asked me to repeat what I had told you earlier. As soon as I was through with the explanation, you brushed aside the genuine issues I had and to my surprise, you introduced the same two issues, which had cropped up during your secret meeting with Maj Gen Ali long before you set foot on NMG soil.
On my company’s issue, I admitted I owned a tours and safaris company and I explained it was not in conflict with my NMG work since I had full-time employees to run and manage it.
You asked Mr Koskei to tell the meeting what he had against me. Mr Koskei drew a long and serious face as he went into great pains to reveal the findings of his investigations on the issue of the vehicle and my tour company. One would have mistaken the seriousness that was on his face for a researcher who had discovered the Aids cure and he was making a major announcement that would shake the world. On the issue of the vehicle, he repeated the same lies that you had been fed before. And he pretended he had obtained documents from KRA at Times Towers. Aren’t those the documents I had given him and you in November? Why didn’t he table his investigation report or give me a copy?
On the issue of the company, Mr Koskei repeated what I had just told you that I owned a firm. I was amused. It had taken Mr Koskei more than three months to secretly shift through my emails for him to “discover” I owned a tour company. Oh boy! The issue of the company has never been a secret and most of my colleagues and bosses knew it. Instead of wasting company resources and time for a whole three months pretending he was carrying out investigations, he should have walked to me and I would have solved the puzzle in matters of seconds by telling him I owned a tour company.
The only serious investigation I have ever heard Mr Koskei has ever done for NMG is to shift through the emails of staff to find out what they communicate and with whom. He has been relying on me to provide him with police contacts when he is faced with a major challenge. I understand he has the background training of a prison warden! For instance, the following morning after you called me (Nov 1, 2006), Mr Koskei came to my work station and he was desperately seeking my help to link him up with the OCPD Kirinyaga over an issue involving NMG.
After I called the OCPD and he was assisted, I mentioned to him that you had called me the previous day and informed him what you had told me. He warned me that I should not take you seriously and said you looked vindictive. There was serious talk in January that Mr Koskei was on his way out. But I’m told you have given him a lifeline and increased his salary after he delivered his first sacrificial head. I’m not the first NMG staff and neither am I the last one to be hounded out of office through Mr Koskei’s lies. If you could be fed with lies by a man who has over the years masqueraded as an investigator and you believed him, it raises serious questions about your management and leadership skills. The only thing I would wish to inform you is that Mr Koskei doesn’t play my league. I would dismiss any investigations done by him with the contempt it deserves. If going through emails of staff is what he calls investigations, I pitty him and the NMG management.
All the NMG staff he spoke to when he was purporting to conduct investigations have stepped forward and told me what he asked them and his desperate and futile attempt to have them write statements incriminating me.
They further informed me that Mr Koskei was suggesting that I might have written one of the anonymous letters on the sex scandals involving top managers and which have been given wide circulation in the internet. And surprisingly, a week after I left NMG, an anonymous member of staff posted an email in the internet blog revealing that reporter Mugo Njeru was promoted to Provincial News Editor in Nyeri (Gitahi’s home district) as a reward for spying on me and feeding the bosses with lies. The same author recalled how Mr Njeru was suspended during the referendum in 2005 for allegedly attempting to extort some money from the Leader of the Official Opposition, Mr Uhuru Kenyatta.
The Political Editor, Mr Emman Omari, who had also been mentioned in the scandal, was let off the hook. However, it shocked everyone in the newsroom when Mr Njeru’s suspension was hurriedly revoked and he was paid for the days he was on suspension. Did he have vital information which he could have used to blackmail the bosses? A lot of cash from politicians flooded the newsroom during the referendum and it’s no secret to Mr Mwangi, Mr Odindo and journalists. But the matter was left to die a natural death!
Mr Njeru’s promotion did not come to me as a surprise. I knew from the very first day he had held a meeting with Mr Odindo and I was aware of what the two had discussed and the subsequent talks he had with my colleagues. He like Mr Koskei can take pride in that they were rewarded for peddling lies against me. And I can only sympathise with Mr Koskei. It’s no surprise that he has survived in NMG and he earns a living from the blood of many innocent staff he played a big role to kick out.
For your own information, I did not author and neither did I any knowledge of the staff members who were writing the anonymous letters. However, I personally agree with the authors of the letters and I wish I had known who they were for I would have made variable contribution. I stand to be counted as one of the people who support their course of action. What they are revealing is only mild and I encourage them to dig below the surface. But I say kudos for their brilliance and courage. They are the true sons and daughters of NMG. I challenge any of the managers who has been accused of being involved in the sex scandals to take the earliest flight to court to clear their names if what is being written about them has no truth. Would Mr Mwangi be brave enough to take the dock? I dare him.
Friendly senior managers have confided in me that the issue of the anonymous letters might have played a major role in the turn of events during my meeting with you and the six other managers. However, I was shocked that none of you dared touch the subject and you only dwelt on the issue of the vehicle and the tour company. Now, I know that I was facing seven big cowards. If that is what was troubling your collective conscience, how comes none of you was brave enough to face me like men and table the issue during that meeting?
Even yourself, Mr Gitahi? You couldn’t have had the courage to bring up the issue even after you had summoned the six other managers to give you back up and confidence? You are indeed a bunch of six cowards. You knew the blatant lies you had been told could not hold any water and I guess that is why you developed cold feet. Surely, you can’t rely on pedestrian gossip from Maj Gen Ali and Mr Koskei to run a reputable company like NMG.
You kept asking the six managers whether any of them had any issue to ask me but none of them spoke. Only Mr Mwangi, in his characteristic arrogance, who mumbled something to do with why they wanted to be gatekeepers of my stories. You must have felt let down and disappointed when none of the managers lynched me as you had anticipated and even some of them came to my defence. All of you looked so timid with bowed heads. And it was six giants against one small time crime editor in your tension-filled office!
Sensing that you had nothing against me, you asked me to wait outside as you deliberated my fate. After a while, Mr Mwangi and Mr Odindo followed Helen to her office where another round of secret talks were held. I was asked to wait outside her office. Mr Mwangi and Mr Odindo slipped out of Helen’s office when I went to the gents and when I returned, Helen told me that Mr Mwangi’s secretary was looking for me on 4th floor. I met her on the stairs coming to look for me in the 5th floor and she handed me a letter signed by Mr Mwangi. But I was informed that the memo was drafted either in your office or in Helen’s office and Mr Mwangi only appended his signature.
What a coincidence? The same things that I was being accused of in the memo were the same things I had been told you had discussed with Maj Gen Ali before you reported to Nation Centre. In the memo, Mr Mwangi asked me to show cause why severe disciplinary action should not be taken against me because of the two alleged offences I was being accused of. I replied to the memo but after further discussions with friendly NMG managers, my lawyer and my confidants, I felt the only option I had was to resign the following day. I tendered my resignation letter at 8am on February 2, 2007. Due to the hostility you showed me the previous day, I felt I was badly exposed to the external enemy and your promises that I had your support were as hollow as a debe. I could no longer trust you and work with you.
The commissioner must be smiling now that his long desired wish of driving me out of NMG was accomplished by none other than the CEO of NMG. What is it that Maj Gen Ali and Mr Mwangi have against you that you decided you would better betray me rather than be blackmailed by the two? And what have you achieved by my departure?
People who know you say you are born again and a staunch Christian. And they say you have reserved a corner in your office where you kneel down every morning to offer prayers to the Almighty. If what they say about you is true, you must be very conversant with the Biblical story of how Jesus was crucified based on false witness and lies. Just like the false Pharisees, you led me to a slaughterhouse and crucified me based on information you knew was total fabrication. I think it was hypocritical of you to pretend you were offering me a shoulder to cry on, only for you to display your true colours on February 1. I wish you played safe by asking Mr Mwangi or any other manager to pull the trigger on your behalf and later you shed crocodile tears after the mission was complete as you feigned innocence. That incident wiped any slightest respect that was remaining in my heart for you.
Since it appears you were so determined to help Maj Gen Ali achieve his narrow objective, I wish to humbly ask you and Mr Mwangi to apply for the job of Police Spokesman so that you can better defend the rot in the commissioner’s backyard and the myriad of problems facing him. Maj Gen Ali has since 2005 been so determined to see me out of NMG and his desperation has reached fever pitch of late because his three-year contract is fast coming to an end on April 4. He saw me as the biggest obstacle to the renewal of his contract. I believe President Kibaki will be doing himself and this country a great disservice by renewing his contract. The spiraling crime and the sharp divisions in the force are the hallmark of his tenure.
Apart from Maj Gen Ali and his friend Mr Mwangi who seemed unhappy with my coverage of crime and exposing the crimes rocking the country, no other police officer has ever lodged any complaints against me. In fact, many of them have been calling me to commend me for my good work and that is why they trusted me with information that they could not give any other media house. Maj Gen Ali is the sixth commissioner to be in that office since I took over the crime job at NMG and none of his predecessors has ever complained about my stories or shown such open hostility. And neither have I ever been threatened in the course of my duties. I believe I would not be alive today if I was engaged in any underhand dealings.
Security chiefs who are close to me have introduced another angle to the desperation you displayed to fast-track my departure from NMG. Is it true you visited State House in January and the agenda was to help the regime win a second term? Did you discuss the security situation in the country, which is one of the campaign tools that Narc campaigned on in 2002 and now looks like a big monster that is threatening to swallow them? Do you sincerely believe that my departure from NMG will help improve the security of the country which I risked my life for the entire period I worked in NMG to improve it?
I hope NMG will not take cover now that am out and watch from the periphery as innocent Kenyans continue losing their lives due to insecurity at the expense of pleasing Maj Gen Ali. The blood of innocent Kenyans will haunt you for the rest of your lives. If it’s indeed true that you were in State House over the coming General Election, then the Opposition need to seriously worry about the impartiality of NMG’s coverage of the elections.
The commissioner is ever paranoid when the media, especially myself, reports incidents crime. He would wish we ignore everything so that his employer would think he is doing a commendable job. Is it then a wonder that he publicly denied there was a raid at the rural home of Mr Michuki when the shaken minister himself had been captured by TV cameras saying the attack was an attempt of his life?
Why was he so paranoid when I exposed the major cover up of the investigations that was done by the CID on a recruitment scandal that had been annulled following claims of corruption unearthed by the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission? Your guess is as good as mine.
And the truth is already in public domain. Why was he so paranoid when I exposed the killing fields of Ongata Rongai and Ngong in 2004 and 2005? Although he called me to his office to plead with me not to expose the killings, I defied him and went ahead to publish the stories. The killings had started triggering a mass exodus of residents. Don’t Ngong and Ongata Rongai residents today enjoy peace due to my journalism?
My resignation is a major victory for Maj Gen Ali, Mr Mwangi, criminals and their beneficiaries. But it was a sad day for the journalism profession in Kenya, Kenyans who relied on NMG to expose the growing wave of crime and families who have ever lost their loved ones to criminals. The evil has for now triumphed over the good, thanks to you Mr Gitahi.
Your actions have seriously dented the reputation and independence of NMG and journalists will now be working in fear since it’s now evident that any influential outsider can now call NMG bosses and demand instant sacking of a writer purely because the journalist has done his work effectively and efficiently. Could both you and Maj Gen Ali explain to Kenyans the role Ms Rose Kimotho plays in both NMG and in the Kenya Police?
I hope you will find time from your busy schedule to respond to the weighty issues I have raised here. I would be happy if you offered any other information to disapprove the issues I have raised here. I will make this letter public as soon as I serve it to you so that Kenyans can know what goes on inside the walls of Nation Centre and in the event of any future threat to my life and my family. I also challenge you to make your response public. Let Kenyans know the truth.
I have left my destiny in the hands of God. Not to Mr Gitahi. Not to Maj Gen Ali, And not to Mr Mwangi. I believe God has good plans for me. I was lucky I had set up a tour company and I did not go out in the wilderness to float. If any of you thought I’ll be waking up every morning a desperate man, move out of my house with a stool and rotate with the sun the whole day, you are badly mistaken. As I told my NMG colleagues in the letter that I broadcast in the internal email network explaining why I resigned, I repeat it again here that there is life beyond NMG and NMG is not the beginning and end of life.
You, Mr Mwangi and the other few managers who thrive in the misery of helpless junior staff are all employees of NMG. None of you own the media house. And one day, you’ll find yourself leaving the company. Anyone of you who thought they would use me as the ventilation for their own frustrations and an excuse to run away from the sex scandals threatening to ruin your lives and their families, my humble request is; please look elsewhere. Your plans are a major flop.
I was well prepared for my departure and I have no regret I resigned. I only take issue with the manner you conduct NMG business by relying on cheap gossip and lies to make important decisions for this great company. Is NMG run from police headquarters or State House, my friend? You inherited a great and vibrant company from Mr Kiboro and if your recent management style is anything to go by, you are fast drilling a hole into the NMG boat.
Am entitled to question your motives and actions since they don’t look genuine at all. For instance, where was the wisdom to retrench 11 journalists, some of whom had not been there for three months and another had just married, and left intact the networks of corruption and sleaze in the newsroom?
Instead of acting on the grievances of the Editorial Department staff who have been demanding that you kick out senior managers implicated in sex scandals, you have chosen to bury your head in the sand hoping the hailstorm will soon be over. And to rub salt into the painful wound in the Editorial Department, you started your retrenchment programme from the department and you only kicked out the small fish whose protests you can happily ignore and find sleep. The battle has just began.
Why would you want to protect senior managers who have been implicated in serious crimes of sex scandals? Which is worst crime, Stephen Muiruri owning a tour company that is giving the Government revenue and creating employment or a manager who uses his influence to sleep around with helpless female staff? Why should Kenyans continue trusting NMG under your leadership if you would be so happy to kick out the good staff and remain with managers who stink and who have given NMG a bad reputation for years?
I was not the only NMG staff who is doing business. Mr Kiboro owned and ran a tour firm. You are an active director of Equity Bank and a dairy farmer. Why the double standard? Why was my case an exception and there was no single day I ever sneaked out of office to attend to my private business or I diverted NMG resources to my private use? So many NMG staff own companies, NGOs and other businesses and no one has ever raised a finger.
I was one of the best performing journalists and I always got a grade Two out of Six in the annual appraisals. I would like to know why you were in such a big hurry to dispose me of. I would also want to know why there is a lot of lies in NMG and who triggered a security scare on Friday by peddling lies.
Yours sincerely,
Stephen Muiruri
Former Crime Editor.
Exclusive kumekucha interview with John Troon, the man who investigated the Ouko murder reveals that there is enough evidence to convict.
February 18, 2007
Mr Linus Gitahi
Group Chief Executive Officer
Nairobi Media Group
P.O Box 49010-00100
NAIROBI
Dear Sir,
RE: PROTEST LETTER
I wish to register my disgust to an incident, which happened to me at around 3pm on Friday, February 16, 2007, at Nation Centre. After I had finished clearing the previous day, I was asked by the accounts staff to collect my cheque on this Friday afternoon. I reported at the 5th floor at the agreed time and we had heartily greetings and talks with the accounts staff.
I was informed there was one signatory who was yet to append his signature and we agreed that I should wait. I then borrowed a copy of the day’s Standard newspaper from one of the staff and rested in one of the chairs.
I had not even known what the headline on the newspaper was before the deputy security manager and a watchman came running, panting and sweating profusely to where I was. After deputy security manager regained his breadth, he politely asked me why I was inside Nation Centre. The two guys looked badly shaken. I told him I had come to collect my cheque and he asked me to accompany him to his office on 4th floor. I obeyed.
On reaching his office, the deputy security manager, who was still sweating, asked me again what I was doing in Nation Centre. I explained my mission. He asked me to give him my staff ID card but I told him I would do so after I had collected my cheque. I asked him to call the cash office and find out if what I had told him was true. After the call, the deputy security manager relaxed and explained to me why he had come running and expressed deep shock and regret that he had been misled.
He told me he had been hurriedly summoned from another place back to Nation Centre and informed that I was causing trouble on the 5th floor and that there were fears that a fight had broken out in the office of the Group Human Resources Director, Mrs Helen Mbugua. I had not even gone to that side and Helen’s office was more than 100 metres from where I was being attended to by the account’s staff. But the deputy security manager was very understanding and he did not harass me at all.
Although he did not tell me who had given him the misleading report, I gathered the episode had been stage-managed by one of the managers and the intention was for me to be embarrassed by being frog-matched out of Nation Centre. Their intentions backfired since I chased away the watchman who kept standing behind me and I asked the deputy security manager to remain with me as I went to collect my cheque. I also asked him to escort me outside so that he can know I had no other mission in Nation Centre. The only sad thing was that Mr Atebe ended up not endorsing my cheque for cashing within NMG due to the security scare.
I know the bitterness in the mouths of a small clique of top managers arose when I tendered my resignation on February 2, 2007, after my reputation and integrity was unfairly questioned by none other by yourself and the Editorial Director, Mr Wangethi Mwangi. Subsequently, I wrote a letter to all the Editorial Staff, which I circulated in the internal email network, and copied the same to you, explaining in details the senseless campaign you and Mr Mwangi had launched against me, together with the police commissioner, Maj Gen Hussein Ali, to force me out of my job as the Crime Editor of the Nation Media Group. I also exposed the lies behind the campaign and shared with the staff some sensitive secrets they had never known. As I had expected, this put a bitter taste in your mouth and Mr Mwangi.
But I did not expect the pettiness and emptiness I saw on Friday. Am aware that some enthusiastic managers who are desperately trying to catch your eye, either to remain relevant, to avoid the axe or to wish away the sex scandals that are threatening to ruin their lives have been trying to outdo each other to please you. But I did not expect anyone to sink so low. Telling lies that I was making trouble is the height of mediocrity and absurdity.
I wish to state very clearly that I have no personal or professional dispute with Helen that I would provoke me to fight her. I have never interacted with her at all since she joined NMG. I have no issue that would make me cause trouble for any other employee of NMG or any person outside Nation Centre.
I take great exception to the primitive way some of your managers choose to conduct business. I wish they would have told me to wait for my cheque outside and I would have obeyed. Mr Gitahi, what is so special and precious with the oxygen that is within Nation Centre that anyone would imagine that anyone not working for NMG would die if they did not breathe it? Excuse me please. I have not died since I resigned three weeks ago.
I have every right to come and collect all the monies that NMG owes me. That’s not a favour and it’s not negotiable. This was a clear case of unwarranted provocation and an affront to my rights and reputation.
However, I wish to inform you that I have finished clearing from NMG and I take great exception to the whole affair that led to my resignation from this great company. Let me make it clear that I’m not seeking sympathy I return. No. Am comfortable in whatever am doing currently. Honestly, I was absolutely fed up with working for a thankless employer. I strongly believe that it’s you who require deep sympathy and prayers for being a puppet of selfish people and dancing to their whims at the expense of your loyal and hardworking staff.
As I stated in my resignation letter and the other letter I wrote and circulated to my fellow journalists on February 3, 2007, I did not regret leaving NMG. However, I took great exception to the way you handled the whole issue right from the time you reported to Nation Centre on November 1, 2006, up to the meeting in your office on February 1, 2007, which you turned into a forum to lynch me and ended up resulting in my resignation the following morning.
On the very first day you reported to Nation Centre, you called me from the blues and expressed your “total support” for me for my impressive performance. In your own words, you said you had been reading my stories for a long time and you were impressed by my writing style and boldness. You further stated that you knew reporting on security was not an easy task due to the security implications involved. Alas! I found an angel in you and I told you I felt so humbled that an outsider could come from nowhere and appreciate my work.
You landed in Nation Centre when I was going through one of the most difficult periods of my life and in my journalism profession and I was contemplating to resign. I told you so during my first meeting with you in your new office. The reason I had not quit was because your predecessor, Mr Wilfred Kiboro, had offered me genuine and unwavering support.
When the NMG Board announced Mr Kiboro’s retirement, I saw a dark cloud hang over my head and I knew the sharks in NMG and in police headquarters, who had since 2005 been baying for my blood for refusing to censor or tone down the reporting of crime stories for their selfish and personal reasons, were now rejoicing and waiting in the sidelines to swallow me.
The campaign to remove me from my job was kicked off by Maj Gen Ali when he called me to his office trying to prevail upon me to stop exposing the real issues behind the scandal that had been exposed by the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission on the recruitment of new police officers. I refused to bend to his wishes and continued exposing those behind the scandal and the lies that Maj Gen Ali had told Kenyans that he had interdicted 175 officers in charge of the recruitment. Not a single officer was sent home. I promptly informed Mr Mwangi about the meeting I had with Maj Gen Ali and the veiled threats he issued to me in his office for refusing to do what he wanted. I informed him verbally and followed it up with an email. Mr Mwangi was part of the campaign.
The well-calculated campaign to have me fired from NMG is well documented in a detailed report I wrote to Mr Mwangi, dated 24, 2007, in response to foul comments he had written to me, appearing to give credence to a misleading and insulting claims against me contained in a statement faxed to all media houses by Maj Gen Ali. I also sent a copy of my report to Mr Kiboro and gave you the same when I first met you in your new office two weeks after you had reported.
But in brief, Maj Gen Ali had on October 22, 2006, issued a statement in response to an exclusive article I had written in the Sunday Nation revealing that three top security chiefs had been short-listed from the post of the CID Director upon the imminent retirement of the then suspended CID chief, Mr Joseph Kamau, Using unpalatable and abusive language, Maj Gen Ali dismissed the entire story as total lies and my own imagination. He went a step further to demand that NMG management should “take the necessary steps” against me for what he termed my “ill-motivated writing.”.
When the statement landed on Mr Mwangi’s desk, he, too, wrote some fouls comments suggesting that I was manufacturing stories and that the reputation of NMG was at stake due to my journalism. He even questioned the credibility of my sources even before he had called me to give my account. It was a clear case of a seasoned editor abandoning his flock and openly siding with external forces for purely personal reasons. It’s then that I decided to write a detailed report to Mr Mwangi explaining that I stood by my story, how I sourced it and specified the number of times Maj Gen Ali had called me to his office trying to arm-twist me to censor crime stories.
But my God did not abandon me. The story that was being discredited by Maj Gen Ali and his new-found friend, Mr Mwangi, with insults and verbal diarrhea was vindicated when, two weeks later, the Head of Civil Service, Mr Francis Muthaura, announced the appointment of Mr Gatiba Karanja, as the new CID Director on November 14. When the Daily Nation splashed the story on Mr Karanja’s appointment, it took boasted on page one how its sister paper had broken the exclusive story. I was deeply overjoyed because Maj Gen Ali and Mr Mwangi’s insults had been put to shame.
I then wrote an email to Mr Mwangi telling him of my joy and my prayer that no other NMG journalist should ever be accused of manufacturing a story by their bosses before they were given a hearing. As I expected, my email did not attract a response from Mr Mwangi. But I knew he was bitter because things did not work out as he had hoped. He had hoped to use the story to discredit me but his plans were ashamed by the accuracy of my reporting and the credibility of my sources. Up to this day, I have never known why Mr Mwangi has been siding with the commissioner while he knew there was no truth in the lies that he was being fed. But now that am free of the newsroom hustles, I believe I can use my investigations skills to find out the real truth.
Every time I wrote a story Maj Gen Ali did not like or he imagined I was about to write (he must be super-human to read other people’s thoughts in advance!), he would call Mr Mwangi to lodge a complain. When I met Mr Kiboro in his office before he retired, he candidly told me, in the presence of the Group Managing Editor, Mr Joseph Odindo, that he had no time for Maj Gen Ali and that he (commissioner) gave up calling him when he ignored his tiring demands and endless complaints. But that did not deter Maj Gen Ali for he found a shoulder to lean on in Mr Mwangi.
For instance, on January 16, 2006, Mr Mwangi wrote an email to me stating and I quote: “By the way, the Police Commissioner called to ask why we appear to be targeting him. He believes we’re being used to undermine him and mentioned a story that someone is writing about his incomplete house in Karen and something about his wife, ete. Do you know anything about this?
I replied to Mr Mwangi and informed him that Maj Gen Ali had in the past called me to his office trying to manipulate and influence our coverage of crime and security stories. I told him that it was after I refused to bend to the commissioner’s whims that he started engaging in a smear campaign with a clear intention to discredit me and my stories and ruin me. I was aware about the issues Mr Mwangi was asking me but I won’t discuss them here for legal reasons and for my own personal safety. But you can refer to the report I handed to Mr Mwangi and Mr Kiboro since the issues are well explained.
After I replied to Mr Mwangi’s email and explained in details the desperate attempts by Maj Gen Ali to arm-twist me and NMG, Mr Mwangi replied thus: Thanks for this. It’s of great help and I can now see the whole picture. At some point, it might become necessary to do a thorough piece on the rivalries in the police department and how that might be impacting on service delivery. Your approach to depersonalize your stories is sound. Let’s continue dealing with issues.” I replied to him and told him that I would take up the new assignment he had tasked me to do. As you’ll find out below, that was my undoing. I was being led to a trap by Mr Mwangi the same way you, Mr Gitahi, came to NMG pretending to be an angle, only for you to display your true colours and hypocracy on the afternoon of February 1, 2007.
While other media houses shied away from exposing the truth behind the raid on Standard newspapers newsroom and the people behind it, those behind the presence of the Artur brothers in the country, sharp divisions in the Kenya Police, the boardroom rows between Maj Gen Ali and Mr Kamau, and on the other hand the rows between Maj Gen Ali and his immediate boss, Internal Security minister, Mr John Michuki, and other behind-the-scenes happenings in the force, I took up the challenge Mr Mwangi had given me and came up with exclusive stories that kept Kenyans informed on what was going on in the security agencies. This is what infuriated Maj Gen Ali to the breaking point.
The above example was not the first time Maj Gen Ali was demanding my sacking from NMG. The first time he did so was in a letter dated September 11, 2006, in a letter he addressed to Managing Editor of the Daily Nation, Mr Bernard Nderitu,
However, a copy of the September 11 letter was secretly faxed to me by a senior police officer, since I was not meant to see it. In the letter, Maj Gen Ali had taken issue with another story I had written in the Sunday Nation on how police lost good cases in court due to shoddy investigations or due to professional negligence brought about by tempering with scenes of crime. I had interviewed some of Kenya’s best experts in law and forensic science to enrich my story. Although the September 11 letter was clearly addressed to Managing Editor of the Daily Nation, it’s still mysterious how Mr Mwangi intercepted the letter while he was on leave and forwarded it Mr Odindo, with some comments on top asking him to act on it. To date, Mr Nderitu has never been formally given the letter that was clearly addressed to him. He knew there was such a letter when I made a copy from my own letter. I, too, would never have known about such a letter were it not for my good and reliable contacts within the Kenya Police. My good friend Mr Odindo was shocked that I had obtained the letter before NMG management got their copy. I explained to him that that was part of my work and that was why I was then the only Crime Editor in Kenya. He demanded that I should surrender to him the copy I had arguing the letter was not meant for me. Since I did not want to annoy my friend, I made a copy and gave him the copy he wanted. I kept mine secretly.
It’s the September 11 letter that led to the meeting I have spoken about above between Mr Kiboro, Mr Odindo and myself. Although Mr Odindo expressed disgust in the innuendos and barbaric language used by Maj Gen Ali, he frankly told me that his hands were tied and I could see the fear that was in his eyes due to Mr Mwangi’s shadow. He was of the view that NMG should ignore replying to the letter. But I stood my ground that I would do it personally if NMG management did not wish to defend one of their own against unwarranted provocation and deliberate insults.
I was being insulted and my reputation questioned by a police commissioner because I had refused to clean his mess and for serving my employer diligently and faithfully. Crime reporting is one of the riskiest jobs in any media house anywhere in the world. I took up the crime job when the killing of two robbery suspects in a day captured headlines. But revolutionalised crime reporting and set very high standards, which am so proud of.
I approached the NMG management with an idea to set up a vibrant crime desk, which they endorsed. I started from scratch and formed a Crime Section that was the envy of other media houses and it became an authority in reporting of crime and security matters in the region. Foreign journalists wanting to follow up a major security issue in Kenya turned to me and NMG and not NMG rivals. I left NMG a proud journalist for the achievements I made. The killing of two robbery suspects today doesn’t capture a headline or a page lead.
Back to the issue of our meeting with Mr Kiboro, the CEO then instructed Mr Odindo to reply to Maj Gen Ali’s letter and tell him NMG management took great exception to his wild claims and ask him to provide any evidence of my impropriety if he had any to allow them take action. Mr Odindo did not write the letter. He only did so two weeks later after I had reminded him several times and cupped it with an email dated September 28, 2006, telling him I would personally reply to Maj Gen Ali’s abusive letter if he was finding it hard to do it for fear of antagonizing his friend, Mr Mwangi.
His reply letter was surprisingly addressed to Police Spokesman, Mr Gideon Kibunjah, and not to the commissioner. And the content was meant to placate the commissioner and did not touch on the issues Mr Kibori had raised. But I personally told Mr Odindo that I understood he was in a catch 22 for he did not want to antagonize himself with Mr Mwangi. I have no problem with Mr Odindo and I’ll always regard him as a dear and genuine friend. I have a lot of respect for him. I believe he has a good heart but he attracts unpopularity in the newsroom due to his association with Mr Mwangi.
So, when you arrived at Nation Centre on November 1, 2006, and placed a call to me, I felt relieved and thought Mr Mwangi’s joy that I had been left badly exposed by Mr Kiboro’s departure was short-lived. I promptly informed Mr Odindo and Mr Nderitu of your surprise telephone call and the nice things you had told me. Today, I know you gave me false hopes as you led me to a slaughterhouse with your sly smile!
Before you were one week old in NMG, my police contacts promptly warned me that you were a leopard in a sheep’s skin cautioned me you were up to no good.
First, the police contacts informed me that you had met Maj Gen Ali, through a meeting that had been arranged by Ms Rose Kimotho, and the agenda of the meeting was that I was a thorn in the flesh for the commissioner and you were to fire me on arrival at NMG. That explains why you knew there was a Stephen Muiruri in NMG and the reason I was the first employee to receive your call and the first employee to be shown the door by you.
I gathered your meeting with the commissioner was held in October, soon after the NMG Board announced Mr Kiboro’s retirement and that you were taking over. So, it was clear in my mind even when I had met you personally that you had started transacting NMG business long you reported to NMG and the axe was going to fall on my head any time. You are a very clever guy. You started counting the chicken before they are hatched. I have since made further inquiries and found out what links the three of you; Ms Kimotho, Maj Gen Ali and yourself. But that matter is beyond this forum.
The contacts told me that the commissioner had given you a lot of dossier about me and two issues had emerged during your secret meeting:
- That I own a tours and safaris company.
- That I was among people who had allegedly bought one of the 400 vehicles that had been sold by the Kenya Police through a public auction in 2005.
I was informed these were the grounds you were to use to fire me. Since you had told me during the telephone conversation on November 1, 2006, that I was free to see you in your office if I had any issue I wanted to discuss with you, I took up the challenge and walked right to your office in the third week of you being in Nation Centre.
Although you were uneasy and shaky when I candidly asked you if it was true that you had met Maj Gen Ali before you reported to NMG and that I was the subject of the discussion, you confirmed it was true. I congratulate you for being a gentleman and honest up to that level. You further said you detested the approach by Maj Gen Ali since you had been tricked it was a lunch date. You further told me that Maj Gen Ali had quickly called you when you reported to apologise to you for tabling NMG matters in such a forum and before you had taken up the job.
I then explained most of the issues I have talked about above and how I had been under intense pressure from Maj Gen Ali to compromise my professional ethics for his own selfish gains. I told you it was his desire that we did not cover crime so that it would look like crime went drastically down during his tenure. I also informed you that I felt exposed because I strongly believed Mr Mwangi, who was then my boss, could appear to be siding with the outsiders instead of his own staff. As I told you then, I still stand by my statement that by being part of the cover up, we would be splashing our hands with the blood of innocent people who are daily being butchered by thugs. And I could not be part of the cover up.
I also gave you original documents of the vehicle that I was alleged to have bought from the police. I also gave you three different newspapers which carried the notice for the public auction. I then gave you a detailed account of the transactions, who the buyer of was and how I came into the picture. I later did a voluntary report on the vehicle issue and explained the same facts. The facts have not changed and they are also contained in the letter I circulated to my colleagues via the Editorial email when I resigned. I also copied the same letter to you.
Though the buyers name and particulars are clearly visible for the official records from the Kenya Police, the auctioneer and Kenya Revenue Authority, you, Mr Mwangi and Mr Koskei twisted facts to suit an intended agenda – to portray me as dishonest and not suitable to hold by position of Crime Editor at NMG. The auction was done in an open and transparent manner and the records clearly show who the buyer was. I brought the documents because I knew Mr Koskei was hunting in the darkness and I wanted to help him speed up the investigations he thought he was doing secretly without my knowledge. I had known long before that he was investigating me.
During our meeting, you then repeated that I had your total backing and you gave me your cellphone number and asked me to call you whenever Mr Mwangi or any other senior editor planned to kill my stories or over any other issue. I did not misuse my closeness with you even for a single second. In some of the times you bumped into me in the streets, you often asked why I had shied away from your office. I did that out of respect and since I could not take advantage of my knowing you to be frequenting your office unnecessarily.
Before you addressed a staff meeting on 3rd floor on February 1, 2007, over the anonymous letters that have been circulating on the alleged sex scandals involving senior managers, you wandered through the crowd and came to where I was seated. I had not seen you coming only that I heard your deep voice when you called my name from behind. I woke and warmly shook your hand. You said you had not seen me for a while and wondered why I had not been to your office even to say jambo. I reminded you that I had bumped into you a week ago while both of us were walking along Moi Avenue and we had a chat. However, I told you I would find time to pop into your office that afternoon.
I had an issue I first wanted to clear with you when I turned up in your office that afternoon. I wanted to clear the issue of story I had written in the Daily Nation more than a week ago on the sharp rise in extra-judicial killings, and which I had been informed by Mr Nderitu that you had taken issue with. He said he had bumped into you on the stairs while going to see Mr Mwangi over the story. Just like Maj Gen Ali, you were not taking any particular issue with the facts in the story. Everything in the story was factual and it was balanced. I even had comments from police headquarters. You were only questioning WHY I had written the story. You claimed that we were being insensitive to the police since they had been killed and you claimed we had not reported about it. You were jumping into an issue from a point of ignorance and I took time to explain to you why you were dead wrong.
I explained that we had reported incidents when police officers had been killed. And I told you we had planned to carry a special report on police officers killed in the line of duty on January 20, 2007. But the story could not see the light of the day because Mr Kibunjah told us that Maj Gen Ali had warned him not to give us the photos of the slain officers to accompany the story. I told you we only had five photos and the Managing Editor for Saturday Nation had said they would not serve the purpose he had intended. He then postponed the publication of the story.
I then told you that the story on extra-judicial killing was supposed to ran a day after we carried the story on the slain officers. It was to be published on January 21, 2007. However, that was not to be. There was a serious technical problem with the computer network that Saturday and the Sunday Nation team explained they could not access the stories which were already in the computers. I called Mr Nderitu on Sunday and he agreed to use the story the following day, January 22, 2007.
Mr Nderiru had informed me that as a result of the concerns you had expressed over the story, Mr Mwangi and Mr Odindo had given him instructions that my stories should not be published until the two (Mr Mwangi and Mr Odindo) cleared them. I told him that I would continue ignore their directives since they were made in the backstreets and were not communicated to me either verbally or in writing. I could not understand why such a rule had to be crafted purposely for me and not any other journalist. It was a deliberate move to frustrate me and render me unproductive so that Mr Mwangi could use the excuse to declare me redundant.
I, therefore, told you that the two had misinterpreted your comments and I humbly asked you to set the records straight I also told you that I feared for my life and that of my family if NMG managers would collude with outsiders for purely personal reasons and sacrifice the company’s reputation and independence. What couldn’t they do to somebody they thought stood between them and their personal desires and ambitions? You did not answer that question.
You then tricked me that you were going to call the two editors so that we could resolve the issue once and for all. You walked to your secretary and in under three minutes, six top managers trooped to your office and they were panting. It looked like they had been told there was an emergency. In came Mr Mwangi, Mr Odindo, Mr Nderitu, the Group Security Manager, Mr Sam Koskei, Mr Dennis Aluanga (whatever his title is), and Mrs Mbugua of HR.
As soon as they sat down, I saw another Gitahi I had not known. You suddenly turned hostile and at one time, I thought your big eyes would prop out of the sockets because of the way you were staring at me, hatred and deed anger written all over your face. You then unleashed the six managers and yourself against me and you and asked me to repeat what I had told you earlier. As soon as I was through with the explanation, you brushed aside the genuine issues I had and to my surprise, you introduced the same two issues, which had cropped up during your secret meeting with Maj Gen Ali long before you set foot on NMG soil.
On my company’s issue, I admitted I owned a tours and safaris company and I explained it was not in conflict with my NMG work since I had full-time employees to run and manage it.
You asked Mr Koskei to tell the meeting what he had against me. Mr Koskei drew a long and serious face as he went into great pains to reveal the findings of his investigations on the issue of the vehicle and my tour company. One would have mistaken the seriousness that was on his face for a researcher who had discovered the Aids cure and he was making a major announcement that would shake the world. On the issue of the vehicle, he repeated the same lies that you had been fed before. And he pretended he had obtained documents from KRA at Times Towers. Aren’t those the documents I had given him and you in November? Why didn’t he table his investigation report or give me a copy?
On the issue of the company, Mr Koskei repeated what I had just told you that I owned a firm. I was amused. It had taken Mr Koskei more than three months to secretly shift through my emails for him to “discover” I owned a tour company. Oh boy! The issue of the company has never been a secret and most of my colleagues and bosses knew it. Instead of wasting company resources and time for a whole three months pretending he was carrying out investigations, he should have walked to me and I would have solved the puzzle in matters of seconds by telling him I owned a tour company.
The only serious investigation I have ever heard Mr Koskei has ever done for NMG is to shift through the emails of staff to find out what they communicate and with whom. He has been relying on me to provide him with police contacts when he is faced with a major challenge. I understand he has the background training of a prison warden! For instance, the following morning after you called me (Nov 1, 2006), Mr Koskei came to my work station and he was desperately seeking my help to link him up with the OCPD Kirinyaga over an issue involving NMG.
After I called the OCPD and he was assisted, I mentioned to him that you had called me the previous day and informed him what you had told me. He warned me that I should not take you seriously and said you looked vindictive. There was serious talk in January that Mr Koskei was on his way out. But I’m told you have given him a lifeline and increased his salary after he delivered his first sacrificial head. I’m not the first NMG staff and neither am I the last one to be hounded out of office through Mr Koskei’s lies. If you could be fed with lies by a man who has over the years masqueraded as an investigator and you believed him, it raises serious questions about your management and leadership skills. The only thing I would wish to inform you is that Mr Koskei doesn’t play my league. I would dismiss any investigations done by him with the contempt it deserves. If going through emails of staff is what he calls investigations, I pitty him and the NMG management.
All the NMG staff he spoke to when he was purporting to conduct investigations have stepped forward and told me what he asked them and his desperate and futile attempt to have them write statements incriminating me.
They further informed me that Mr Koskei was suggesting that I might have written one of the anonymous letters on the sex scandals involving top managers and which have been given wide circulation in the internet. And surprisingly, a week after I left NMG, an anonymous member of staff posted an email in the internet blog revealing that reporter Mugo Njeru was promoted to Provincial News Editor in Nyeri (Gitahi’s home district) as a reward for spying on me and feeding the bosses with lies. The same author recalled how Mr Njeru was suspended during the referendum in 2005 for allegedly attempting to extort some money from the Leader of the Official Opposition, Mr Uhuru Kenyatta.
The Political Editor, Mr Emman Omari, who had also been mentioned in the scandal, was let off the hook. However, it shocked everyone in the newsroom when Mr Njeru’s suspension was hurriedly revoked and he was paid for the days he was on suspension. Did he have vital information which he could have used to blackmail the bosses? A lot of cash from politicians flooded the newsroom during the referendum and it’s no secret to Mr Mwangi, Mr Odindo and journalists. But the matter was left to die a natural death!
Mr Njeru’s promotion did not come to me as a surprise. I knew from the very first day he had held a meeting with Mr Odindo and I was aware of what the two had discussed and the subsequent talks he had with my colleagues. He like Mr Koskei can take pride in that they were rewarded for peddling lies against me. And I can only sympathise with Mr Koskei. It’s no surprise that he has survived in NMG and he earns a living from the blood of many innocent staff he played a big role to kick out.
For your own information, I did not author and neither did I any knowledge of the staff members who were writing the anonymous letters. However, I personally agree with the authors of the letters and I wish I had known who they were for I would have made variable contribution. I stand to be counted as one of the people who support their course of action. What they are revealing is only mild and I encourage them to dig below the surface. But I say kudos for their brilliance and courage. They are the true sons and daughters of NMG. I challenge any of the managers who has been accused of being involved in the sex scandals to take the earliest flight to court to clear their names if what is being written about them has no truth. Would Mr Mwangi be brave enough to take the dock? I dare him.
Friendly senior managers have confided in me that the issue of the anonymous letters might have played a major role in the turn of events during my meeting with you and the six other managers. However, I was shocked that none of you dared touch the subject and you only dwelt on the issue of the vehicle and the tour company. Now, I know that I was facing seven big cowards. If that is what was troubling your collective conscience, how comes none of you was brave enough to face me like men and table the issue during that meeting?
Even yourself, Mr Gitahi? You couldn’t have had the courage to bring up the issue even after you had summoned the six other managers to give you back up and confidence? You are indeed a bunch of six cowards. You knew the blatant lies you had been told could not hold any water and I guess that is why you developed cold feet. Surely, you can’t rely on pedestrian gossip from Maj Gen Ali and Mr Koskei to run a reputable company like NMG.
You kept asking the six managers whether any of them had any issue to ask me but none of them spoke. Only Mr Mwangi, in his characteristic arrogance, who mumbled something to do with why they wanted to be gatekeepers of my stories. You must have felt let down and disappointed when none of the managers lynched me as you had anticipated and even some of them came to my defence. All of you looked so timid with bowed heads. And it was six giants against one small time crime editor in your tension-filled office!
Sensing that you had nothing against me, you asked me to wait outside as you deliberated my fate. After a while, Mr Mwangi and Mr Odindo followed Helen to her office where another round of secret talks were held. I was asked to wait outside her office. Mr Mwangi and Mr Odindo slipped out of Helen’s office when I went to the gents and when I returned, Helen told me that Mr Mwangi’s secretary was looking for me on 4th floor. I met her on the stairs coming to look for me in the 5th floor and she handed me a letter signed by Mr Mwangi. But I was informed that the memo was drafted either in your office or in Helen’s office and Mr Mwangi only appended his signature.
What a coincidence? The same things that I was being accused of in the memo were the same things I had been told you had discussed with Maj Gen Ali before you reported to Nation Centre. In the memo, Mr Mwangi asked me to show cause why severe disciplinary action should not be taken against me because of the two alleged offences I was being accused of. I replied to the memo but after further discussions with friendly NMG managers, my lawyer and my confidants, I felt the only option I had was to resign the following day. I tendered my resignation letter at 8am on February 2, 2007. Due to the hostility you showed me the previous day, I felt I was badly exposed to the external enemy and your promises that I had your support were as hollow as a debe. I could no longer trust you and work with you.
The commissioner must be smiling now that his long desired wish of driving me out of NMG was accomplished by none other than the CEO of NMG. What is it that Maj Gen Ali and Mr Mwangi have against you that you decided you would better betray me rather than be blackmailed by the two? And what have you achieved by my departure?
People who know you say you are born again and a staunch Christian. And they say you have reserved a corner in your office where you kneel down every morning to offer prayers to the Almighty. If what they say about you is true, you must be very conversant with the Biblical story of how Jesus was crucified based on false witness and lies. Just like the false Pharisees, you led me to a slaughterhouse and crucified me based on information you knew was total fabrication. I think it was hypocritical of you to pretend you were offering me a shoulder to cry on, only for you to display your true colours on February 1. I wish you played safe by asking Mr Mwangi or any other manager to pull the trigger on your behalf and later you shed crocodile tears after the mission was complete as you feigned innocence. That incident wiped any slightest respect that was remaining in my heart for you.
Since it appears you were so determined to help Maj Gen Ali achieve his narrow objective, I wish to humbly ask you and Mr Mwangi to apply for the job of Police Spokesman so that you can better defend the rot in the commissioner’s backyard and the myriad of problems facing him. Maj Gen Ali has since 2005 been so determined to see me out of NMG and his desperation has reached fever pitch of late because his three-year contract is fast coming to an end on April 4. He saw me as the biggest obstacle to the renewal of his contract. I believe President Kibaki will be doing himself and this country a great disservice by renewing his contract. The spiraling crime and the sharp divisions in the force are the hallmark of his tenure.
Apart from Maj Gen Ali and his friend Mr Mwangi who seemed unhappy with my coverage of crime and exposing the crimes rocking the country, no other police officer has ever lodged any complaints against me. In fact, many of them have been calling me to commend me for my good work and that is why they trusted me with information that they could not give any other media house. Maj Gen Ali is the sixth commissioner to be in that office since I took over the crime job at NMG and none of his predecessors has ever complained about my stories or shown such open hostility. And neither have I ever been threatened in the course of my duties. I believe I would not be alive today if I was engaged in any underhand dealings.
Security chiefs who are close to me have introduced another angle to the desperation you displayed to fast-track my departure from NMG. Is it true you visited State House in January and the agenda was to help the regime win a second term? Did you discuss the security situation in the country, which is one of the campaign tools that Narc campaigned on in 2002 and now looks like a big monster that is threatening to swallow them? Do you sincerely believe that my departure from NMG will help improve the security of the country which I risked my life for the entire period I worked in NMG to improve it?
I hope NMG will not take cover now that am out and watch from the periphery as innocent Kenyans continue losing their lives due to insecurity at the expense of pleasing Maj Gen Ali. The blood of innocent Kenyans will haunt you for the rest of your lives. If it’s indeed true that you were in State House over the coming General Election, then the Opposition need to seriously worry about the impartiality of NMG’s coverage of the elections.
The commissioner is ever paranoid when the media, especially myself, reports incidents crime. He would wish we ignore everything so that his employer would think he is doing a commendable job. Is it then a wonder that he publicly denied there was a raid at the rural home of Mr Michuki when the shaken minister himself had been captured by TV cameras saying the attack was an attempt of his life?
Why was he so paranoid when I exposed the major cover up of the investigations that was done by the CID on a recruitment scandal that had been annulled following claims of corruption unearthed by the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission? Your guess is as good as mine.
And the truth is already in public domain. Why was he so paranoid when I exposed the killing fields of Ongata Rongai and Ngong in 2004 and 2005? Although he called me to his office to plead with me not to expose the killings, I defied him and went ahead to publish the stories. The killings had started triggering a mass exodus of residents. Don’t Ngong and Ongata Rongai residents today enjoy peace due to my journalism?
My resignation is a major victory for Maj Gen Ali, Mr Mwangi, criminals and their beneficiaries. But it was a sad day for the journalism profession in Kenya, Kenyans who relied on NMG to expose the growing wave of crime and families who have ever lost their loved ones to criminals. The evil has for now triumphed over the good, thanks to you Mr Gitahi.
Your actions have seriously dented the reputation and independence of NMG and journalists will now be working in fear since it’s now evident that any influential outsider can now call NMG bosses and demand instant sacking of a writer purely because the journalist has done his work effectively and efficiently. Could both you and Maj Gen Ali explain to Kenyans the role Ms Rose Kimotho plays in both NMG and in the Kenya Police?
I hope you will find time from your busy schedule to respond to the weighty issues I have raised here. I would be happy if you offered any other information to disapprove the issues I have raised here. I will make this letter public as soon as I serve it to you so that Kenyans can know what goes on inside the walls of Nation Centre and in the event of any future threat to my life and my family. I also challenge you to make your response public. Let Kenyans know the truth.
I have left my destiny in the hands of God. Not to Mr Gitahi. Not to Maj Gen Ali, And not to Mr Mwangi. I believe God has good plans for me. I was lucky I had set up a tour company and I did not go out in the wilderness to float. If any of you thought I’ll be waking up every morning a desperate man, move out of my house with a stool and rotate with the sun the whole day, you are badly mistaken. As I told my NMG colleagues in the letter that I broadcast in the internal email network explaining why I resigned, I repeat it again here that there is life beyond NMG and NMG is not the beginning and end of life.
You, Mr Mwangi and the other few managers who thrive in the misery of helpless junior staff are all employees of NMG. None of you own the media house. And one day, you’ll find yourself leaving the company. Anyone of you who thought they would use me as the ventilation for their own frustrations and an excuse to run away from the sex scandals threatening to ruin your lives and their families, my humble request is; please look elsewhere. Your plans are a major flop.
I was well prepared for my departure and I have no regret I resigned. I only take issue with the manner you conduct NMG business by relying on cheap gossip and lies to make important decisions for this great company. Is NMG run from police headquarters or State House, my friend? You inherited a great and vibrant company from Mr Kiboro and if your recent management style is anything to go by, you are fast drilling a hole into the NMG boat.
Am entitled to question your motives and actions since they don’t look genuine at all. For instance, where was the wisdom to retrench 11 journalists, some of whom had not been there for three months and another had just married, and left intact the networks of corruption and sleaze in the newsroom?
Instead of acting on the grievances of the Editorial Department staff who have been demanding that you kick out senior managers implicated in sex scandals, you have chosen to bury your head in the sand hoping the hailstorm will soon be over. And to rub salt into the painful wound in the Editorial Department, you started your retrenchment programme from the department and you only kicked out the small fish whose protests you can happily ignore and find sleep. The battle has just began.
Why would you want to protect senior managers who have been implicated in serious crimes of sex scandals? Which is worst crime, Stephen Muiruri owning a tour company that is giving the Government revenue and creating employment or a manager who uses his influence to sleep around with helpless female staff? Why should Kenyans continue trusting NMG under your leadership if you would be so happy to kick out the good staff and remain with managers who stink and who have given NMG a bad reputation for years?
I was not the only NMG staff who is doing business. Mr Kiboro owned and ran a tour firm. You are an active director of Equity Bank and a dairy farmer. Why the double standard? Why was my case an exception and there was no single day I ever sneaked out of office to attend to my private business or I diverted NMG resources to my private use? So many NMG staff own companies, NGOs and other businesses and no one has ever raised a finger.
I was one of the best performing journalists and I always got a grade Two out of Six in the annual appraisals. I would like to know why you were in such a big hurry to dispose me of. I would also want to know why there is a lot of lies in NMG and who triggered a security scare on Friday by peddling lies.
Yours sincerely,
Stephen Muiruri
Former Crime Editor.
Exclusive kumekucha interview with John Troon, the man who investigated the Ouko murder reveals that there is enough evidence to convict.
State House Nairobi And The Sleeping Habits Of Three Presidents
Of the three presidents Kenya has had thus far, it is only President Kibaki who has turned State house Nairobi into a 'permanent residence' surprising both friends and foe as to why such a wealthy man with a palatial private residence in the city and known for his frugality, would opt for these official accommodation which costs a fortune to maintain, more so when he is staying there.
Kenya's first president, Jomo Kenyatta avoided sleeping at State house Nairobi at all costs causing the rumour mills to say he was convinced that the colonial ghosts still inhabited the place since it was the governors official residence during the colonial era.
Kenyatta would always travel to Gatundu to spend the night or even days if he had official duties in the city. During the crisis resulted by the assassination of Tom Mboya in July 1969, Kenyatta held an emergency cabinet meeting under a mango tree at his Gatundu residence.
Kenyatta's favourite residence was State house Nakuru and he appears to have felt more secure in the Rift valley where he also owned large tracts of land and had vast business interests not to mention friends from his community who had also acquired vast tracts of land in the vicinity.
State house Mombasa was also a favorite for Kenyatta but others say it was through doctors orders that Kenyatta chose to spend a lot of time at the coast where the climate suited his heath condition best.
Incidentally it was at State house Mombasa where Kenyatta collapsed and died in 1978. It was as a result of spending a lot of quality time at the coast that the then provincial commissioner Eliud Mahihu became a very powerful and wealthy man in Kenya.
Then came Daniel arap Moi, Kenya's second president who got off to a good start and assured Kenyans of peace and prosperity and with time favored, Nakuru to Nairobi State house but spent more time at his private residence at Kabarak which he acquired during the Kenyatta days.
While in Nairobi, Moi hardly slept at State house and always opted for his Kabarnet gardens home in Woodley near Kibera. He still stays there when he's visiting the city as the government allocated him the house which was supossed to be the official residence of the Vice president.
Moi also enjoyed staying at the coast and like his predecessor was also a frequent visitor to Mombasa where he enjoyed a lot of support from the coastal people until 2002 when they turned against his chosen heir Uhuru Kenyatta.
Then came Mwai Emilio Kibaki who has surprised many by making the Nairobi State house his 'permanent abode' inspite of having a palatial residence in the upmarket Muthaiga area in the outskirts of the city.
However, Kibaki's presidency has been influenced a lot by his eccentric wife Lucy who is known to have brought radical changes at State house early into his administration, raising eyebrows several times among his handlers.
Soon after Kibaki ascended to power, the bar was re-opened at State house Nairobi allowing consumption of alcohol at the country's most prestigious address something that had not existed for 24 years during Moi's era.
Moi loathed alcohol with passion after losing scores of his childhood friends to alcohol with many of them drinking themselves to death. The trend continued during his long stint as vice president.
The bar opened during Kibaki's era turned out to be a 24 hour facility where the likes of the then powerful minister of internal security Chris Murungaru and kitchen cabinet members spent the night there discussing political and other social issues with the president to the chagrin of the first lady.
During this period, the president was still recovering from a road accident that seemed to have affected his mental faculties as he suffered from frequent memory lapses and was advised by his doctors to quit alcohol.
This gave the first lady a perfect opportunity to shut down the facility which had degenerated to a place for senior politicians to idle and get drank at the expense of the tax payer.
Not to mention, the Narc election victory was celebrated for the better part of 2003 and where better to do it than at State house with the president and his handlers. Some senior politicians were known to leave State house at 5 a.m in the morning, almost daily.
These heavy drinking sessions found their way into the influential Economist magazine.
During the funeral of the late Yatta MP, J.P Mutiso, Murungaru and health minister Charity Ngilu staggered from the police helicopter that brought them to Yatta, only to pass out when they took their seats. It was later overheard amongst journalists at the function that they had been from State house.
Kibaki has chosen to do all official business and also sleep at State house Nairobi, being the first head of state to turn the imposing white structure into his home though the first lady commutes every morning from Muthaiga and hardly spend the night at State house for security reasons.
Known to be very short tempered, the first lady is said to have thrown the President into the swimming pool at State House while he was on a wheel chair forcing security men to dive inside with their clothes still on, to rescue their boss.
From that day, the first lady is never be left alone with the President and has to leave the grounds before nightfall to avoid any nasty situations that could jeopardize the health or life of the president.
Nevertheless, Lucy still controls what happens at State house and this was seen by the ejection of Kibaki's first state house comptroller Matere Keriri who fell out with her and was replaced by one obscure Hyslop Ipu.
Exclusive kumekucha interview with John Troon, the man who investigated the Ouko murder reveals that there is enough evidence to convict.
Kenya's first president, Jomo Kenyatta avoided sleeping at State house Nairobi at all costs causing the rumour mills to say he was convinced that the colonial ghosts still inhabited the place since it was the governors official residence during the colonial era.
Kenyatta would always travel to Gatundu to spend the night or even days if he had official duties in the city. During the crisis resulted by the assassination of Tom Mboya in July 1969, Kenyatta held an emergency cabinet meeting under a mango tree at his Gatundu residence.
Kenyatta's favourite residence was State house Nakuru and he appears to have felt more secure in the Rift valley where he also owned large tracts of land and had vast business interests not to mention friends from his community who had also acquired vast tracts of land in the vicinity.
State house Mombasa was also a favorite for Kenyatta but others say it was through doctors orders that Kenyatta chose to spend a lot of time at the coast where the climate suited his heath condition best.
Incidentally it was at State house Mombasa where Kenyatta collapsed and died in 1978. It was as a result of spending a lot of quality time at the coast that the then provincial commissioner Eliud Mahihu became a very powerful and wealthy man in Kenya.
Then came Daniel arap Moi, Kenya's second president who got off to a good start and assured Kenyans of peace and prosperity and with time favored, Nakuru to Nairobi State house but spent more time at his private residence at Kabarak which he acquired during the Kenyatta days.
While in Nairobi, Moi hardly slept at State house and always opted for his Kabarnet gardens home in Woodley near Kibera. He still stays there when he's visiting the city as the government allocated him the house which was supossed to be the official residence of the Vice president.
Moi also enjoyed staying at the coast and like his predecessor was also a frequent visitor to Mombasa where he enjoyed a lot of support from the coastal people until 2002 when they turned against his chosen heir Uhuru Kenyatta.
Then came Mwai Emilio Kibaki who has surprised many by making the Nairobi State house his 'permanent abode' inspite of having a palatial residence in the upmarket Muthaiga area in the outskirts of the city.
However, Kibaki's presidency has been influenced a lot by his eccentric wife Lucy who is known to have brought radical changes at State house early into his administration, raising eyebrows several times among his handlers.
Soon after Kibaki ascended to power, the bar was re-opened at State house Nairobi allowing consumption of alcohol at the country's most prestigious address something that had not existed for 24 years during Moi's era.
Moi loathed alcohol with passion after losing scores of his childhood friends to alcohol with many of them drinking themselves to death. The trend continued during his long stint as vice president.
The bar opened during Kibaki's era turned out to be a 24 hour facility where the likes of the then powerful minister of internal security Chris Murungaru and kitchen cabinet members spent the night there discussing political and other social issues with the president to the chagrin of the first lady.
During this period, the president was still recovering from a road accident that seemed to have affected his mental faculties as he suffered from frequent memory lapses and was advised by his doctors to quit alcohol.
This gave the first lady a perfect opportunity to shut down the facility which had degenerated to a place for senior politicians to idle and get drank at the expense of the tax payer.
Not to mention, the Narc election victory was celebrated for the better part of 2003 and where better to do it than at State house with the president and his handlers. Some senior politicians were known to leave State house at 5 a.m in the morning, almost daily.
These heavy drinking sessions found their way into the influential Economist magazine.
During the funeral of the late Yatta MP, J.P Mutiso, Murungaru and health minister Charity Ngilu staggered from the police helicopter that brought them to Yatta, only to pass out when they took their seats. It was later overheard amongst journalists at the function that they had been from State house.
Kibaki has chosen to do all official business and also sleep at State house Nairobi, being the first head of state to turn the imposing white structure into his home though the first lady commutes every morning from Muthaiga and hardly spend the night at State house for security reasons.
Known to be very short tempered, the first lady is said to have thrown the President into the swimming pool at State House while he was on a wheel chair forcing security men to dive inside with their clothes still on, to rescue their boss.
From that day, the first lady is never be left alone with the President and has to leave the grounds before nightfall to avoid any nasty situations that could jeopardize the health or life of the president.
Nevertheless, Lucy still controls what happens at State house and this was seen by the ejection of Kibaki's first state house comptroller Matere Keriri who fell out with her and was replaced by one obscure Hyslop Ipu.
Exclusive kumekucha interview with John Troon, the man who investigated the Ouko murder reveals that there is enough evidence to convict.
Why Narc-Kenya Is Its' Own Worst Enemy
When Narc-Kenya was launched, there was plenty of optimism among Kenyans as the party advocated for positive values including ending tribalism and fighting against ethnic based politics.
The party also had a semblance of national appeal as members of parliament from all regions were present during its birth and the best part was the considerable number of young legislators who identified themselves with the new party.
All that is history now and the party is deeply embroiled in infighting that has led to the postponement of its elections twice as incumbent MPs are pitted against aspirants in the fight of how to constitute election panels at the constituency level.
Worse still, it seems to have now gone tribal as all Kikuyu politicians advocating for minimum reforms prior to the general elections have been branded traitors by the party.
The simple logic here is that constitution reformists are anti-Kibaki's re-election bid and Kibaki being a Kikuyu, it is a form of betrayal from another Kikuyu to oppose one of their own.
Muite has faced the wrath of the Narc-Kenya hawks who sneaked into his Kabete constituency and branded him a traitor in his absence, the same has been done to Subukia mp, Koigi wa Wamwere who's effigy was burnt yesterday by his constituents who were incited by a party team led by the hawkish assistant minister of justice Danson Mungatana.
One who never takes things lying down, Koigi took the war back to the party and dismissed those who are inciting his constituents and likened them to Kanu hawks in their hey days who only knew about using money and not ideology to garner support.
It is predictable that the party is likely to field well-financed candidates in Kikuyu and Subukia constituencies to 'deal' with the two lawmakers to ensure that they never see the doors of parliament again.
The same party officials have also been in the forefront in defending president Kibaki from allegation of lying claiming that he never said at any one time that he would be a one term president. He never said he would lead only for five years so as to put the country on the right economic footing before stepping down for the late Wamalwa Kijana who was the vice president until his death.
Kibaki's most ardent defender Martha Karua said yesterday that she recently viewed an old tape where the president was answering questions from the foreign media in the early days of his administration and was confronted with the question of whether he would be a one-term president by foreign journalists. According to Karua, Kibaki wondered where the journalist had gotten the idea from, which is strange because it was all over the media at the time.
ODM de facto leader Raila Odinga has sworn in church while holding a Bible high in the air, that Kibaki said he would only rule for one term and step down and nobody has yet accused the Langata MP of lying from the pulpit.
It may not seem important now since Kibaki has already made it clear that he is seeking re-election but what should be established is whether the president is lying or not. Majority of Kenyans believe he is a gentleman who has ruined himself by keeping bad company while others think he is just as bad as the company he keeps and does not deserve sympathy from the voters come December.
The president is yet to disclose the party that he will use as his vehicle to vie for his re-election but there are strong indications that it will be Narc-Kenya which has managed to make more enemies than friends in its short existence, and Kibaki could probably have a better chance of being re-elected by seeking another party ticket rather than this outfit that has turned out to be a tribal monster and an enemy of the people.
Exclusive kumekucha interview with John Troon, the man who investigated the Ouko murder reveals that there is enough evidence to convict.
The party also had a semblance of national appeal as members of parliament from all regions were present during its birth and the best part was the considerable number of young legislators who identified themselves with the new party.
All that is history now and the party is deeply embroiled in infighting that has led to the postponement of its elections twice as incumbent MPs are pitted against aspirants in the fight of how to constitute election panels at the constituency level.
Worse still, it seems to have now gone tribal as all Kikuyu politicians advocating for minimum reforms prior to the general elections have been branded traitors by the party.
The simple logic here is that constitution reformists are anti-Kibaki's re-election bid and Kibaki being a Kikuyu, it is a form of betrayal from another Kikuyu to oppose one of their own.
Muite has faced the wrath of the Narc-Kenya hawks who sneaked into his Kabete constituency and branded him a traitor in his absence, the same has been done to Subukia mp, Koigi wa Wamwere who's effigy was burnt yesterday by his constituents who were incited by a party team led by the hawkish assistant minister of justice Danson Mungatana.
One who never takes things lying down, Koigi took the war back to the party and dismissed those who are inciting his constituents and likened them to Kanu hawks in their hey days who only knew about using money and not ideology to garner support.
It is predictable that the party is likely to field well-financed candidates in Kikuyu and Subukia constituencies to 'deal' with the two lawmakers to ensure that they never see the doors of parliament again.
The same party officials have also been in the forefront in defending president Kibaki from allegation of lying claiming that he never said at any one time that he would be a one term president. He never said he would lead only for five years so as to put the country on the right economic footing before stepping down for the late Wamalwa Kijana who was the vice president until his death.
Kibaki's most ardent defender Martha Karua said yesterday that she recently viewed an old tape where the president was answering questions from the foreign media in the early days of his administration and was confronted with the question of whether he would be a one-term president by foreign journalists. According to Karua, Kibaki wondered where the journalist had gotten the idea from, which is strange because it was all over the media at the time.
ODM de facto leader Raila Odinga has sworn in church while holding a Bible high in the air, that Kibaki said he would only rule for one term and step down and nobody has yet accused the Langata MP of lying from the pulpit.
It may not seem important now since Kibaki has already made it clear that he is seeking re-election but what should be established is whether the president is lying or not. Majority of Kenyans believe he is a gentleman who has ruined himself by keeping bad company while others think he is just as bad as the company he keeps and does not deserve sympathy from the voters come December.
The president is yet to disclose the party that he will use as his vehicle to vie for his re-election but there are strong indications that it will be Narc-Kenya which has managed to make more enemies than friends in its short existence, and Kibaki could probably have a better chance of being re-elected by seeking another party ticket rather than this outfit that has turned out to be a tribal monster and an enemy of the people.
Exclusive kumekucha interview with John Troon, the man who investigated the Ouko murder reveals that there is enough evidence to convict.
Sh 150,000 Bounty For Carjacker Who Enjoys Shooting His Victims In The Head
Breaking News: Matheri gunned down in Athi River after hearty meal of chapati and chicken
Simon Matheri Ikere is top on the list of criminals wanted by the police and has been blamed for the upsurge of violent robbery in Nairobi in recent weeks including the brutal murder of a father and his son near Nairobi last week.
The standard six-drop-out is said to have an extremely short temper and is even known to have killed his friends while on this fatal fits of anger, which results in him drawing his pistol and shooting his victims (mostly in the head) without thinking twice.
He has become so notorious that his family has disowned him and left it to the government to hunt him down and kill him as he has caused them a lot of pain and put their lives in danger as well.
Simon's brothers and parents have been victims of a local vigilante group at Gachie near Nairobi that he is involved in a tit-for-tat bloodletting war with. This has led to the group burning down 8 houses belonging to the Ikere family and killing three families members so far.
The vigilantes have already circulated information to the fearful family that if Simon continues killing people and committing violent crimes, they will wipe out his family hence prompting them to live on the edge of death every day.
Matheri has also been linked to various bank robberies and brazen car jacking incidents where the victims were shot dead in the head, even though they did not offer any resistance or even try to raise an alarm. He is said to introduce himself to his victims prior to carrying out the executions.
Nobody knows how many murders he has committed or how many high profile robberies he has pulled off. Police say 8 murders but the vigilante group puts it at three times that at 24
Police believe that Matheri is responsible for the murder of AIDS researcher, Job Bwayo on February 6 along the Kiserian-Isinya road in an incident where two other motorists were shot dead by his alleged gang.
Why has Matheri eluded the police for so long considering the manhunt that has been out for him for the past two years or so?
It is believed that he has many informers who keep tabs for him including what his family members and relatives are saying about him and he is known to personally carry out executions for those he suspects to have attempted betraying him to the authorities or even talk ill of him.
This has instilled fear especially among those who live in and around Kihara village, Gachie division of Kiambu district, which is his home area, and the place where the mention of his name sends shivers down the spines of the locals.
In spite of the' puffed up' criminal record of Matheri that police have released to the public, the sixth born in a family of 11 remains more of a villain than a hero and just like the proverbial 40 days of a thief, Simon's time is running out as police close in on him.
Exclusive kumekucha interview with John Troon, the man who investigated the Ouko murder reveals that there is enough evidence to convict.
Simon Matheri Ikere is top on the list of criminals wanted by the police and has been blamed for the upsurge of violent robbery in Nairobi in recent weeks including the brutal murder of a father and his son near Nairobi last week.
The standard six-drop-out is said to have an extremely short temper and is even known to have killed his friends while on this fatal fits of anger, which results in him drawing his pistol and shooting his victims (mostly in the head) without thinking twice.
He has become so notorious that his family has disowned him and left it to the government to hunt him down and kill him as he has caused them a lot of pain and put their lives in danger as well.
Simon's brothers and parents have been victims of a local vigilante group at Gachie near Nairobi that he is involved in a tit-for-tat bloodletting war with. This has led to the group burning down 8 houses belonging to the Ikere family and killing three families members so far.
The vigilantes have already circulated information to the fearful family that if Simon continues killing people and committing violent crimes, they will wipe out his family hence prompting them to live on the edge of death every day.
Matheri has also been linked to various bank robberies and brazen car jacking incidents where the victims were shot dead in the head, even though they did not offer any resistance or even try to raise an alarm. He is said to introduce himself to his victims prior to carrying out the executions.
Nobody knows how many murders he has committed or how many high profile robberies he has pulled off. Police say 8 murders but the vigilante group puts it at three times that at 24
Police believe that Matheri is responsible for the murder of AIDS researcher, Job Bwayo on February 6 along the Kiserian-Isinya road in an incident where two other motorists were shot dead by his alleged gang.
Why has Matheri eluded the police for so long considering the manhunt that has been out for him for the past two years or so?
It is believed that he has many informers who keep tabs for him including what his family members and relatives are saying about him and he is known to personally carry out executions for those he suspects to have attempted betraying him to the authorities or even talk ill of him.
This has instilled fear especially among those who live in and around Kihara village, Gachie division of Kiambu district, which is his home area, and the place where the mention of his name sends shivers down the spines of the locals.
In spite of the' puffed up' criminal record of Matheri that police have released to the public, the sixth born in a family of 11 remains more of a villain than a hero and just like the proverbial 40 days of a thief, Simon's time is running out as police close in on him.
Exclusive kumekucha interview with John Troon, the man who investigated the Ouko murder reveals that there is enough evidence to convict.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Kumekucha Daily Home Page: Mon 19th Feb 2007
Kumekucha Today
Lead Story
There Is Enough Evidence To Convict Ouko Killers, John Troon Tells Kumekucha
Lead Story
There Is Enough Evidence To Convict Ouko Killers, John Troon Tells Kumekucha
Why A Vote for Kibaki Is A Vote Against Bringing Ouko's Killer To Justice
Waiting 3 Decades For Justice: Can The Judiciary Reform Itself?
Why Many Kenyans Wish That The Mombasa Marathon Would Stay Away
Recent stories
Brand new non-sexual NMG scandal: Which newspaper should Kenyans now trust?
Woe unto you if you are a Kikuyu and you support calls for minimum reforms
Bishop Margaret Wanjiru joins ODM-Kenya
Why reforms battle may be headed for a bloody conclusion
We warned you: Cash falls from the sky at Western Kenya political meeting
Unpredictable Ngilu sleeps with the enemy yet again
25 suspended from school for NOT being circumcised
Rev. Mutava Musyimi to challenge Nyagah in Gacoka
General Elections Update: Why it is going to start raining cash in Kenya soon
The Biggest Mistake Dr Ouko's Killers Made
The Kenya Shilling In 2007: Are Speculators Right?
New NMG Sex Scandal letter surfaces
Is This Woman Finance Minister Kimunya's Girlfriend?
Is John Githongo working with Raila Odinga?
No ID Cards, No Elections: Raila Now Tells Kibaki
The Secret Life Of Two Magistrates
After Nyahah, Amos Kimunya Now Runs Into Trouble With Angry Constituents
Martha Karua Calls Muite A Coward
Province With The Highest Number Of Presidential Candidates Chases Mirage
Secrets of the Masai Kenyans are ignorant of and yet white women tourists know
Tony Gachoka: Gigolo or shrewd operator?
What to do when your neighbour falls in love with your wife
Fight against escalating crime: Why Ali's contract will now be renewed
Bishop Margaret Wanjiru's wedding now stopped by High court
New Travel Advisory tells Americans that violent crime-prone Kenya is unsafe to travel to
Kamukunji MP Norman Nyagah gets the shock of his life when he tries to visit his constituents
Most Evil Daily Crime Goes Unreported In Kenya: WHY?
Why Evil Nicholas Biwott Has Prospered Under The Kibaki Regime
Chief Justice Gicheru Ignores Tribalism As He Prepares Yet Another Radical Surgery Of The Judiciary
Rift Valley Fever Spins Out Of Control As Death Tolls Reaches 139
Raila Swears With The Holy Bible That Kibaki Is Lying
Escalating Crime And Killing In Nairobi: What Truth In Hit Squad Rumour?
Is There A Hit Squad Link In Strange Mombasa Explosion?
Can Kibaki Dare Appoint A Fellow Kikuyu As VP?
Ringera Slaps Kenyans In The Face Yet Again
Raila's Own Broken Promises Even As He Points Finger At Kibaki
101 immigration excuses a Kenyan can use to avoid deportation from the US
Liar Liar, Ngilu Screams At Kibaki
How politicians control the press: The story of Emman Omari and George Saitoti
Kenyan women dishing our sexual favors in the workplace: How serious is it?
Why Nation managers will not be fired.
...And more Lies From His Finance Minister
Why Mwalimu Mati was hounded out of TI
Will Senior Nation Editors Be Fired Over Sex Scandal Allegations?
How corruption starts with the people who finance presidential campaign
How did arrogant Michuki make his millions?
Sex Scandal Involving Boss Exposed At Nation Media Group As Letter With Details Is Posted On The Web
Corruption in Narc Started with these people who financed Kibaki's Presidential Bid
Americans Murdered By Kenyan Carjackers
Why Roselyn Nambuye Should Be Appointed Chief Justice
Escalating Crime: Who oredered the hit on a traffic policeman?
Serious problems in cash-strapped ODM-Kenya over unworkable nomination system
Women suspects now being locked up in policemen's bedrooms
Kalonzo And Raila On Yet Another Begging Mission In The USA
Marital Rape in Kenya: Woman Goes to Court To Stop Serial Rapist Husband
Musalia Mudavadi's Unfaithful Wife And His Bid For The Presidency
Police Commissioner's Contract Almost Over As Crime Escalates
VP Awori Announces That he Is Kibaki's Running Mate
Why Kenyans Should Prepare For Mass Action And Mass Violence
Rift valley fever Panic Hits Nairobi
Kalonzo Tells Kibaki: You Are Too Tired To Rule
The sales Lady From Anglo Leasing
Githongo: Son of The President's Bossom Buddy Who Dissapointed
Why Would The President's Men Need So Much Cash?
Latest Githingo Tapes On Anglo Leasing: What Impact Will They Have On The Kibaki Government?
Is President Kibaki In The Githongo Tapes?
7 Signs That The Kibaki Government Is Corrupt
Anglo Leasing And Goldenberg: Can You Spot The Difference?
The Githongo Tapes: Do We Need To Be Careful About The British?
Crime Made In The Uniformed Forces
The Most Harassed And Abused Woman Journalist In East Africa
No Reforms No Elections Hit Of '97 Remixed and Re-Released for 2007
How To Make A Quick Tax Free Million In 2007
Why John Githongo Must Stand For President
Current Crime Wave: Why It Must Be Linked To The Elections
Margaret Wanjiru and Pastor Pius Muiru: The Untold Story
How Two Presidents looted Kenya
Is Samuel Gichuru HIV positive?
African Lion Safari In Kenya: The Day a Lion did the unthinkable
Who will be Raila Odinga's running mate? Surprise, surprise
Puzzling Bank Robbery In Mombasa
Mutula Kilonzo: The Real Man Behind The City Laywer And ODM Activist
Why Has Standard Newspapers Gone Soft Against The Government?
Bishop Margaret Wanjiru Controversy
Carjackers with political ambitions
Is Bizarre Rumour About Mutula Kilonzo In ODM True?
The Deepest Analysis Of Raila Odinga The Presidential Candidate
Kenya General Elections 2007: The Latest Prediction
Is Kalonzo The Soft Underbelly Of ODM-Kenya Unity?
Citizen Weekly Editors To Vie For Political Office.
The Kalonzo Musyoka You Don't Know Part 4: How He Grew Up With Witchcraft And Forces Of Darkness
Dangers Somalia Poses To Kenya
The Big Moi Blunder On Somali That Is Being Paid For By Kenyan Blood
The Kalonzo Musyoka You Don't Know And His Big Obstacle In His Own Back Yard.
There is too much hot information in this blog now. To avoid missing anything subscribe to our email newsletter Kumekucha Confidential. If you're not a yet a subscriber, become one today by sending an email to KUMEKUCHA-SUBSCRIBE@YAHOOGROUPS.COM
Other Hot Stories;
Tom Mboya Murder Mystery Solved
What A Peasant Farmer Thinks Of ODM, Raila And Elections 2007
Ex-Mungiki, Ndura Waruinge: What You Don't Know About Election Violence In Kenya.
This Blog is dedicated to the memory of this man...
Other Amazing Stories From The Archives;
Biwott: The Man Kenyans Love To Hate
Exclusive Interview: Alnoor Kassam Of TradeBank Fame Speaks to Kumekucha
The Four Most Important Provinces For A Winning Presidential Candidate
The Most Hotly Discussed Topic In This Blog: Kikwete Behaves Like The Kenyan Ambassador
Why The Daily Nation Is Such A Potent Political Weapon And The Mistake Kanu Made In 2002
Great Business Stories: Mandatally Manji's Business Secrets
Sunday, February 18, 2007
There Is Enough Evidence To Convict Ouko Killers, John Troon Says
Kumekucha Exclusive
Last Tuesday was February 13th and marked the 17th anniversary of the brutal murder of the best foreign minister Kenya ever had, Dr Robert John Ouko.
Kumekucha recently managed an exclusive interview with Detective Superintend John Troon, now in quiet retirement, about this brutal murder, which Kenyans have chosen to forget. Instructively there are some questions that Troon opted not to answer. The questions were obviously a little too sensitive, especially when you consider the fact that Ouko's killers are still alive and well today and have considerable political power, means and therefore reach.
John Troon: The man ordinary Kenyans will never forget
In other words 17 years after the death of Ouko and after so many other persons have also lost their lives because of what they knew, we still have people who fear for their safety over the case. One brave woman, Marianne Briner who lives somewhere in Europe, keeps on changing her residence and taking other security precautions. But to date she has never given up the fight to have Ouko's killers brought to justice.
Troon reveals that contrary to what many Kenyans think, there is actually enough available evidence available to convict Ouko's killers. This is despite the fact that the list of would-be witnesses who have died under mysterious circumstances is just too long.
Kumekucha: Is there any other case in your entire police career that has affected you personally more than the Ouko murder enquiry?
Troon: The Ouko case was not a simple and straightforward investigation and was unique in the sense that I was also dealing with corrupt Kenyan officials in the top echelons of Government and law enforcement. There was no other case in my police career, either in UK or overseas where corrupt officials at the highest Establishment levels deliberately set out to frustrate and obstruct my investigations.
Kumekucha: Despite the fact that so many would-be witnesses in the Ouko case are now deceased, do you think (in your opinion) that there is enough evidence to convict the murderers today?
Troon: I am convinced, from what I know of the evidence thus far adduced, not only from my investigations, but subsequent Judicial and Select Committee investigations that there is sufficient evidence to justify criminal proceedings for murder, conspiracy to murder, and accessory before and after the fact (if there is such an offence under the Kenyan criminal law) against certain individuals domiciled in Kenya. I am not surprised that no decision has yet been made (as far as I am aware) by the Kenyan authorities to bring such charges particularly in the light of additional evidence both factual and circumstantial obtained by the Select Committee.
Kumekucha: If the clock was turned back and you were to commence the Ouko investigations all over again today, what would you do differently this time.
Troon: I would review the staffing of my team and exclude all Kenyan police officers from my independent investigations. It was very unfortunate that almost all of the Kenyan police officers seconded to my team were corrupt and specifically briefed to report back to my main suspects through the late Commissioner of Police, and to obstruct and frustrate my investigation by intimidating potential witnesses. There is no doubt that the murder scene was ‘set up’ knowingly by certain Kenyan police officers and Special Branch to support the Establishment conclusion of ‘suicide’. I would have insisted that all my team should have been brought from the UK to retain independence and preserve the integrity of the investigation. On reflection I would have applied to the Kenyan High Court for Judicial Orders compelling my main suspects to present themselves for interview, as you know I had powers of arrest invested in me but was forbidden to use these against my main suspects due to political intervention.
Kumekucha: What are the reasons that made you conclude that Ouko was most likely killed by executive order from the highest authority in the land at the time?
Troon: My reasons for this conclusion are fully set out in my evidence to the Select Committee, you only have to study the facts and degree of Establishment intervention.
Kumekucha: During your investigations there was a point where you took a long walk from the place where the body was found to Dr Ouko’s home while timing yourself. What were you trying to establish at this point?
Troon: I was conducting my own independent examination of the scene where the body was discovered. There was no doubt in my mind at this early stage that the scene had been tampered with and not properly screened off, I also wanted to time the distance from Dr Ouko’ residence by foot and by vehicle. In addition to disprove the Kenyan police statements that no vehicles could access the scene at the time of the murder because “there were large stones and boulders blocking the access route”(My walk proved that this was not the case).
Kumekucha: What was you initial reaction when you were confronted with the suicide theory by local authorities? Did you think that maybe this was a case of gross incompetence or did you suspect foul play immediately?
Troon: My initial and subsequent reaction was that suicide was obviously not the cause of death, the Kenyan Establishment insistence that it was suicide based on no evidence, convinced me that there must have been a cover up decision at the highest level to convince me by force that it was suicide for obvious reasons. There was incompetence by the Kenyan authorities, not only in setting up an amateurish false scene, but to continue the insistence of the suicide theory and at the same time providing me with false information as to who was responsible for the murder (i.e. Dr Ouko’s brother, girl friend etc) obvious red herrings.
Kumekucha: Any parting remarks?
Troon: Please give my kindest regards to all the friends (Yes I did have some!) that I made whilst in Kenya, they know who they are.
Last Tuesday was February 13th and marked the 17th anniversary of the brutal murder of the best foreign minister Kenya ever had, Dr Robert John Ouko.
Kumekucha recently managed an exclusive interview with Detective Superintend John Troon, now in quiet retirement, about this brutal murder, which Kenyans have chosen to forget. Instructively there are some questions that Troon opted not to answer. The questions were obviously a little too sensitive, especially when you consider the fact that Ouko's killers are still alive and well today and have considerable political power, means and therefore reach.
John Troon: The man ordinary Kenyans will never forget
In other words 17 years after the death of Ouko and after so many other persons have also lost their lives because of what they knew, we still have people who fear for their safety over the case. One brave woman, Marianne Briner who lives somewhere in Europe, keeps on changing her residence and taking other security precautions. But to date she has never given up the fight to have Ouko's killers brought to justice.
Troon reveals that contrary to what many Kenyans think, there is actually enough available evidence available to convict Ouko's killers. This is despite the fact that the list of would-be witnesses who have died under mysterious circumstances is just too long.
Kumekucha: Is there any other case in your entire police career that has affected you personally more than the Ouko murder enquiry?
Troon: The Ouko case was not a simple and straightforward investigation and was unique in the sense that I was also dealing with corrupt Kenyan officials in the top echelons of Government and law enforcement. There was no other case in my police career, either in UK or overseas where corrupt officials at the highest Establishment levels deliberately set out to frustrate and obstruct my investigations.
Kumekucha: Despite the fact that so many would-be witnesses in the Ouko case are now deceased, do you think (in your opinion) that there is enough evidence to convict the murderers today?
Troon: I am convinced, from what I know of the evidence thus far adduced, not only from my investigations, but subsequent Judicial and Select Committee investigations that there is sufficient evidence to justify criminal proceedings for murder, conspiracy to murder, and accessory before and after the fact (if there is such an offence under the Kenyan criminal law) against certain individuals domiciled in Kenya. I am not surprised that no decision has yet been made (as far as I am aware) by the Kenyan authorities to bring such charges particularly in the light of additional evidence both factual and circumstantial obtained by the Select Committee.
Kumekucha: If the clock was turned back and you were to commence the Ouko investigations all over again today, what would you do differently this time.
Troon: I would review the staffing of my team and exclude all Kenyan police officers from my independent investigations. It was very unfortunate that almost all of the Kenyan police officers seconded to my team were corrupt and specifically briefed to report back to my main suspects through the late Commissioner of Police, and to obstruct and frustrate my investigation by intimidating potential witnesses. There is no doubt that the murder scene was ‘set up’ knowingly by certain Kenyan police officers and Special Branch to support the Establishment conclusion of ‘suicide’. I would have insisted that all my team should have been brought from the UK to retain independence and preserve the integrity of the investigation. On reflection I would have applied to the Kenyan High Court for Judicial Orders compelling my main suspects to present themselves for interview, as you know I had powers of arrest invested in me but was forbidden to use these against my main suspects due to political intervention.
Kumekucha: What are the reasons that made you conclude that Ouko was most likely killed by executive order from the highest authority in the land at the time?
Troon: My reasons for this conclusion are fully set out in my evidence to the Select Committee, you only have to study the facts and degree of Establishment intervention.
Kumekucha: During your investigations there was a point where you took a long walk from the place where the body was found to Dr Ouko’s home while timing yourself. What were you trying to establish at this point?
Troon: I was conducting my own independent examination of the scene where the body was discovered. There was no doubt in my mind at this early stage that the scene had been tampered with and not properly screened off, I also wanted to time the distance from Dr Ouko’ residence by foot and by vehicle. In addition to disprove the Kenyan police statements that no vehicles could access the scene at the time of the murder because “there were large stones and boulders blocking the access route”(My walk proved that this was not the case).
Kumekucha: What was you initial reaction when you were confronted with the suicide theory by local authorities? Did you think that maybe this was a case of gross incompetence or did you suspect foul play immediately?
Troon: My initial and subsequent reaction was that suicide was obviously not the cause of death, the Kenyan Establishment insistence that it was suicide based on no evidence, convinced me that there must have been a cover up decision at the highest level to convince me by force that it was suicide for obvious reasons. There was incompetence by the Kenyan authorities, not only in setting up an amateurish false scene, but to continue the insistence of the suicide theory and at the same time providing me with false information as to who was responsible for the murder (i.e. Dr Ouko’s brother, girl friend etc) obvious red herrings.
Kumekucha: Any parting remarks?
Troon: Please give my kindest regards to all the friends (Yes I did have some!) that I made whilst in Kenya, they know who they are.
A Vote For Kibaki Is A Vote For Ouko's Assassination To Continue Being Ignored
There is a memorable photograph taken by the Nation newspapers in 1990 that shows, President Kibaki, then the health minister viewing the remains of Dr Ouko.
Many Kenyans were sure in 2002 that with Kibaki in State House, the killers of Dr Ouko would finally face justice. Today as the president completes the final leg of his five-year term, it is clear that this will never happen under his watch. It is also clear that if re-elected, chances are nil that anything will happen in this regard.
Yet the president should have taken a leadership role in getting Ouko's killers to face justice, especially when there is enough evidence available to convict, according to expert opinion.
Why is it so important to bring to book the known murderers of Ouko? The best answer to that question is another question. How can Kenyans look at themselves in the mirror every morning and keep a straight face while ignoring this brutal murder of 17 years ago as not being important or even a priority at the moment?
Well, the past is about to catch up with the Kenyan people in a most unpleasant way. The people who killed Ouko have refused to let go of politics and are now positioning themselves to influence the forthcoming elections in a major way and thus deny Kenyans the dream of a genuine new beginning that most desire deeply. These are powerful and devious persons who are greedy and selfish and if not stopped will plunge this country into chaos. Sadly these people are friends of the Kibaki administration.
Somebody who has killed, is bound to kill again and again. Is this what Kenyans want to live with, more so in view of escalating crime in the country?
It is interesting how every criticism of the Kibaki government these days is viewed as "tribal". Just launch a site today and dare criticize the Kibaki administration. The result would be that "angry" readers calling you an uncircumcised Luo (most of the leaders that the most powerful nation in the world, America has had over the centuries have been uncircumcised so what is the big deal all about?) and a Raila Odinga sympathizer would soon litter your blog.
But let us all sober up for a minute and analyze this situation candidly for a moment. A vote for Kibaki in the forthcoming elections will be a vote to retain the status quo. It does not matter what tribe you are, but if you can live with a clean conscience when the murder of an innocent Kenyan, whose only mistake was to fail to be as corrupt as his colleagues in the cabinet, still hangs heavily over the country… when a widow still lives in fear in this great nation and when persons in far away lands still peer anxiously over their shoulders wondering if some gunman will suddenly emerge from nowhere to pump bullets into them…
If you can cast a vote for the incumbent and not be bothered in your conscience about a murder most foul and so brutal that Dr Ouko painfully fractured bones in his leg before he died, not to mention other torturous acts committed against him before death finally and mercifully came through a bullet fired by a gun held next to his head…
If my fellow Kenyan you can vote and live with those facts, and still play with your children and grand children knowing that you want a good secure future for them in this country…
…then I have no words for you. It really does not matter what tribe you are.
Exlusive: Kumekucha Talks To John Troon About Ouko Murder Evidence
Many Kenyans were sure in 2002 that with Kibaki in State House, the killers of Dr Ouko would finally face justice. Today as the president completes the final leg of his five-year term, it is clear that this will never happen under his watch. It is also clear that if re-elected, chances are nil that anything will happen in this regard.
Yet the president should have taken a leadership role in getting Ouko's killers to face justice, especially when there is enough evidence available to convict, according to expert opinion.
Why is it so important to bring to book the known murderers of Ouko? The best answer to that question is another question. How can Kenyans look at themselves in the mirror every morning and keep a straight face while ignoring this brutal murder of 17 years ago as not being important or even a priority at the moment?
Well, the past is about to catch up with the Kenyan people in a most unpleasant way. The people who killed Ouko have refused to let go of politics and are now positioning themselves to influence the forthcoming elections in a major way and thus deny Kenyans the dream of a genuine new beginning that most desire deeply. These are powerful and devious persons who are greedy and selfish and if not stopped will plunge this country into chaos. Sadly these people are friends of the Kibaki administration.
Somebody who has killed, is bound to kill again and again. Is this what Kenyans want to live with, more so in view of escalating crime in the country?
It is interesting how every criticism of the Kibaki government these days is viewed as "tribal". Just launch a site today and dare criticize the Kibaki administration. The result would be that "angry" readers calling you an uncircumcised Luo (most of the leaders that the most powerful nation in the world, America has had over the centuries have been uncircumcised so what is the big deal all about?) and a Raila Odinga sympathizer would soon litter your blog.
But let us all sober up for a minute and analyze this situation candidly for a moment. A vote for Kibaki in the forthcoming elections will be a vote to retain the status quo. It does not matter what tribe you are, but if you can live with a clean conscience when the murder of an innocent Kenyan, whose only mistake was to fail to be as corrupt as his colleagues in the cabinet, still hangs heavily over the country… when a widow still lives in fear in this great nation and when persons in far away lands still peer anxiously over their shoulders wondering if some gunman will suddenly emerge from nowhere to pump bullets into them…
If you can cast a vote for the incumbent and not be bothered in your conscience about a murder most foul and so brutal that Dr Ouko painfully fractured bones in his leg before he died, not to mention other torturous acts committed against him before death finally and mercifully came through a bullet fired by a gun held next to his head…
If my fellow Kenyan you can vote and live with those facts, and still play with your children and grand children knowing that you want a good secure future for them in this country…
…then I have no words for you. It really does not matter what tribe you are.
Exlusive: Kumekucha Talks To John Troon About Ouko Murder Evidence
Why Crime Reporter Stephen Muiruri Was Forced To Resign
A guest writer offers a different and revealing view to the Muiruri case
I first met Stephen Muiruri in Machakos town where I had gone to 'chase' a follow up story on the accident that president Kibaki was involved in on December 8, 2002 on the Nairobi-Mombasa highway at the Machakos turn off popularly known as Makutano
He had also traveled from the city with a photographer and we met outside the offices of the traffic base commander where he was chatting with local correspondents and asking questions about the near fatal crash that almost killed the presidential aspirant who went on to occupy the highest office in the land.
When I learnt that this was the legendary crime reporter, Muiruri, I was shocked beyond belief. For starters, he spoke broken English with a heavy Kikuyu accent and was so full of himself that he did not notice that the local stringers were having a hard time in understanding what he was saying.
I was to learn later that he had gotten the job at the Nation through 'strings' pulled by the powerful editorial director Wangethi Mwangi who is now under intense pressure to resign over a sex scandal that has rocked the giant Aga Khan owned Media group. But again, that is another story.
When Muiruri tendered his resignation last week and wrote a long letter explaining the circumstances to colleagues (which leaked and was posted on the web), it came as no surprise to many who had been carefully following the "Muiruri" case as his departure was long overdue and could be part of the problem that has caused a lot of discontent among junior and senior graduate reporters who earned less than Muiruri in spite of their qualifications.
Lets give the devil his dues, Muiruri had impeccable sources and contacts and this enabled the Nation get exclusives including his last major scoop where he amazingly revealed the individuals who had been short-listed to take over from the former CID boss, Joseph Kamau.
Among the four candidates Muiruri talked about in his articles was Gatiba Karanja who was later appointed to the post, a fact that went down badly with police commissioner Hussein Ali who works closely with Wangethi Mwangi and NMG boss Linus Gitahi, this is according to Muiruri's resignation letter that was reproduced in this blog.
According to Muiruri's letter it is obvious that they were very good friends with the former CID director, Mr Kamau who intervened on his behalf when senior police officers wanted to acquire a police bonded vehicle that Muiruri's cousin had already paid for among two other cars that were put up for auction.
Muiruri was later accused by Wangethi and Gitahi of having been bribed by Kamau with a car. Muiruri's bosses at NMG also claimed that he was receiving cash from the CID boss from time to time to give him favorable coverage.
Considering the way Kamau and Muiruri worked together, the accusations were plausible although there was no shred of evidence. But again, bosses don’t need evidence when they are accusing their subordinates; talk of the saying that 'the boss is always right'
It seems that Police commissioner Ali may have put pressure on the Nation to get rid of "Kamau's man". More so when the commissioner is keen to control the flow of information to the media and what ultimately gets published as far as crime and security related stories are concerned. Although chances are that Mururi will carry his contacts with him to his next job, no other newspaper in the country has the kind of circulation and reach that the Nation has. The damage to Ali, if any, will therefore be minimal.
It is no secret that Muiruri's articles were badly written with grammatical errors but his stories were factual and in most cases very accurate. In many senior reporting position the world over, good writing is not the most important skill editor's seek, since there are sub-editors who often re-write many stories while keeping the facts intact. Muiruri's value was obviously evident in his investigative skills and excellent contacts. However it seems that the lad had outlived his time at NMG and what better time to force him out than now when a major shakeup is in progress amid the damaging sex scandal where the name of group managing editor, Joseph Odindo has also featured. Odindo is one of the most experienced and respected journalists in Kenya today.
NMG will not miss Muiruri all that much as sometime last year, another crime reporter, Dominic Wabala left the STANDARD and joined Nation and is already filling in for Muiruri. Wabala is experienced and a very seasoned crime reporter who also has his own impeccable sources of many years, not to mention his grasp for written and spoken English which is excellent.
This is not the last among the unceremonious exits from the Nation as the purge is in progress amid the imminent exposure of a sex scandal involving top editorial staff and their juniors in the newsroom in a sex-for-promotion scam that disgruntled employees have anonymously said they will expose details of on March 1. This blog is among those that the employees intend to use to expose the sleaze.
Exlusive: Kumekucha Talks To John Troon About Ouko Murder Evidence
I first met Stephen Muiruri in Machakos town where I had gone to 'chase' a follow up story on the accident that president Kibaki was involved in on December 8, 2002 on the Nairobi-Mombasa highway at the Machakos turn off popularly known as Makutano
He had also traveled from the city with a photographer and we met outside the offices of the traffic base commander where he was chatting with local correspondents and asking questions about the near fatal crash that almost killed the presidential aspirant who went on to occupy the highest office in the land.
When I learnt that this was the legendary crime reporter, Muiruri, I was shocked beyond belief. For starters, he spoke broken English with a heavy Kikuyu accent and was so full of himself that he did not notice that the local stringers were having a hard time in understanding what he was saying.
I was to learn later that he had gotten the job at the Nation through 'strings' pulled by the powerful editorial director Wangethi Mwangi who is now under intense pressure to resign over a sex scandal that has rocked the giant Aga Khan owned Media group. But again, that is another story.
When Muiruri tendered his resignation last week and wrote a long letter explaining the circumstances to colleagues (which leaked and was posted on the web), it came as no surprise to many who had been carefully following the "Muiruri" case as his departure was long overdue and could be part of the problem that has caused a lot of discontent among junior and senior graduate reporters who earned less than Muiruri in spite of their qualifications.
Lets give the devil his dues, Muiruri had impeccable sources and contacts and this enabled the Nation get exclusives including his last major scoop where he amazingly revealed the individuals who had been short-listed to take over from the former CID boss, Joseph Kamau.
Among the four candidates Muiruri talked about in his articles was Gatiba Karanja who was later appointed to the post, a fact that went down badly with police commissioner Hussein Ali who works closely with Wangethi Mwangi and NMG boss Linus Gitahi, this is according to Muiruri's resignation letter that was reproduced in this blog.
According to Muiruri's letter it is obvious that they were very good friends with the former CID director, Mr Kamau who intervened on his behalf when senior police officers wanted to acquire a police bonded vehicle that Muiruri's cousin had already paid for among two other cars that were put up for auction.
Muiruri was later accused by Wangethi and Gitahi of having been bribed by Kamau with a car. Muiruri's bosses at NMG also claimed that he was receiving cash from the CID boss from time to time to give him favorable coverage.
Considering the way Kamau and Muiruri worked together, the accusations were plausible although there was no shred of evidence. But again, bosses don’t need evidence when they are accusing their subordinates; talk of the saying that 'the boss is always right'
It seems that Police commissioner Ali may have put pressure on the Nation to get rid of "Kamau's man". More so when the commissioner is keen to control the flow of information to the media and what ultimately gets published as far as crime and security related stories are concerned. Although chances are that Mururi will carry his contacts with him to his next job, no other newspaper in the country has the kind of circulation and reach that the Nation has. The damage to Ali, if any, will therefore be minimal.
It is no secret that Muiruri's articles were badly written with grammatical errors but his stories were factual and in most cases very accurate. In many senior reporting position the world over, good writing is not the most important skill editor's seek, since there are sub-editors who often re-write many stories while keeping the facts intact. Muiruri's value was obviously evident in his investigative skills and excellent contacts. However it seems that the lad had outlived his time at NMG and what better time to force him out than now when a major shakeup is in progress amid the damaging sex scandal where the name of group managing editor, Joseph Odindo has also featured. Odindo is one of the most experienced and respected journalists in Kenya today.
NMG will not miss Muiruri all that much as sometime last year, another crime reporter, Dominic Wabala left the STANDARD and joined Nation and is already filling in for Muiruri. Wabala is experienced and a very seasoned crime reporter who also has his own impeccable sources of many years, not to mention his grasp for written and spoken English which is excellent.
This is not the last among the unceremonious exits from the Nation as the purge is in progress amid the imminent exposure of a sex scandal involving top editorial staff and their juniors in the newsroom in a sex-for-promotion scam that disgruntled employees have anonymously said they will expose details of on March 1. This blog is among those that the employees intend to use to expose the sleaze.
Exlusive: Kumekucha Talks To John Troon About Ouko Murder Evidence
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)