KAIKAI'S KICKER: Of a Mulot ‘Cabinet Secretary’ and the emerging republic of scammers

On my Kicker tonight, I had a rather entertaining day last Sunday. A smooth talking caller claiming to be a Cabinet Secretary reached out with a raft of imaginary offers that included opportunities of working together on a wide range of official and private matters. With a poor accent, he was audacious enough to introduce himself by the name of a serving Cabinet Secretary known well to me. I played along and pretended surprised and honored by the call, and this invited the caller to upgrade my ticket; he promptly passed the phone supposedly to the Prime Cabinet Secretary, who despite doing a poor job of imitating Musalia Mudavadi’s voice, proceeded to engage in a conversation of stately niceties.

I played along and started enjoyed their drill and thinking they may well pass the phone on to the Deputy President and then the President. But I was disappointed by how quickly they descended – the supposed Cabinet Secretary claimed he had lost a cousin and was heading out for the funeral and that the purported Prime Cabinet Secretary was dashing out for a flight to Mombasa. The fake CS then asked for a funeral donation. I played along, and promised that my bodyguard will call him shortly and deliver the money in cash. I immediately called one of the most decent police officers in Nairobi and narrated the story. He offered to act as my bodyguard and call the so called CS. In a matter of a few minutes, the police officer tracked the calls and established that the two supposed Cabinet Secretaries were not even anywhere near Nairobi. So when the supposedly bereaved Cabinet Secretary called to follow up on my funeral donation, I asked him, ‘eero, habari ya Mulot? He retorted ‘kwenda huko’ and immediately disconnected the call, bringing our entertainment to an end.

But I got thinking; just how many such calls had a happier ending for the scammers? And a disturbing question persisted in my mind; is scamming becoming a normal part of Kenya’s national life? Currently, the news outlets in the country are awash with painful tales of unsuspecting Kenyans losing money to people who purport to help them out on one issue or the other. In Uasin Gishu county, tens of parents sold their property in order to raise money that was supposed to secure education opportunities for their children in Finland, all the way in Europe. Fundamentally, what is the difference between the organizers of the Uasin Gishu Finland scholarships and my fake Cabinet Secretaries of Mulot?

How about that promise of World Cup jobs in Qatar that never were? What difference would it have made if the promise came through a phone call from my bereaved trickster Cabinet Secretary of Mulot?

Let us face it; a dangerous even chilling trend of high level scamming is taking root in Kenya. We are not too far away from mainstreaming scamming, just like official corruption as a celebrated way of making a living in Kenya. There is something else that is even more scary and that is the absence of both official and widespread public outrage over the rising cases of scamming. It is alarming to watch an air of normalcy greeting these acts of grand con artistry.

Like the infamous pyramid scheme involving some Sacco organization in Kiambu five years ago, the Uasin Gishu scholarship scam is likely to end up a victims’ only affair. And like the Frenchman who was scammed millions for a box of paving stones, the Uasin Gishu jobs and scholarships victims must cross their fingers in the hope that the courts of law will show a contrasting attitude towards scamming and indeed shock the country into stopping on its tracks the frightening descent of Kenya into republic of scammers. Meantime, good night bwana CS wa Mulot!

That is my Kicker!