KAIKAI’S KICKER: Albert Ojwang - Tribute to the Kenyan spirit of accountability

On my kicker tonight, our country sometimes feels like a land battered by a series of horrendous Biblical plagues. The last one week alone feels like a freaky convergence or is it clash between the tormenting plagues of Pharaoh’s Egypt and the terrifying Book of Revelation visions of John in the island of Patmos.

In the blood-curdling murder of Albert Ojwang and the brazen, chilling point-blank shooting of Boniface Mwangi – two incidents just days apart, the Kenya Police currently carry on their badges the mark of the strange plague presently tormenting Kenya. The police have this week defied even that African superstition saying that lightning does not strike in the same spot more than once. But the National Police have not only been long-stay hosts of lightning; but indeed their constant companions especially around the streets of Nairobi.

It is against the backdrop of the ongoing plagues that every Kenyan must be proud of one thing; the resilience of the spirit for accountability in this country. Kenya is certainly still far from realising an accountable society and democracy. But the journey is definitely in progress as especially illustrated by the events of the last few days. The image of two potential cold-blood killers shrinking behind anti-flu face masks in court today was a deserved reward for the resilience of the spirit of accountability in Kenya. Without uniforms and their guns, they appeared sunken and liquefied in the dock of the court of law; two little offsprings of impunity leaning miserably only at the first minute of their judgment day. The Kenyan burning spirit for accountability won over impunity; hounding the two police officers from the very second the clip of the chilling shooting emerged.

Yes, Kenyans can and have lost lives to impunity, like they did with Albert Ojwang last week, but they still turn around to offer an epic battle against the demons of impunity. It is a spirit that does not rest or give up. It turns up. It stands up. It rises up from the ashes. It overcomes the greatest of forces and sometimes, with surprising speed. Without that profoundly Kenyan resilient spirit for accountability, Albert Ojwang would actually have banged his head against the cell wall of Nairobi’s Central Police Station and died in yet another pitiful, forgettable suicide case.

He would have joined the late Foreign Affairs Minister John Robert Ouko, who according to the Chief Government Pathologist Jason Ndaka Kaviti, shot himself in the head at close range, set himself on fire and attempted to flee the scene. Yes, the late Kaviti told the country that the brutally murdered Minister Ouko had committed suicide. You see, impunity, especially of the official kind, tends to tell, sorry to say, very stupid lies. And maybe there is some little good in it especially in genealogical circles; because we now know that Police Spokesman Muchiri Nyagah and the late Dr. Jason Kaviti, are cousins!

That is my kicker.