As Kenyans reflect with horror the recent grisly murders associated with the outlawed Mungiki sect information exclusively availed to us indicates that past and present Mungiki leaders were occasionally feted at State House by the last regime and that they are on first name terms with key operatives in the current top leadership of the country.
The Mungiki leadership is also quite chummy with key figures in the opposition who at one time or the other incorporated the banned sect in pursuit of their political agenda, we can authoritatively report.
In the run-up to the 2005 referendum vote, we have learnt, a senior cabinet minister secretly met a section of Mungiki leadership at a city hotel and agreed to a visit to State House two days later. The purpose of the meeting was to assure president Kibaki that the sect would back the banana/yes campaign. To lead the Mungiki delegation was a key founder of the movement but who has since quit, Ndura Waruingi.
However, say sources, the meeting was cancelled at the eleventh hour when state house got jittery at the thought of parading members of an outlawed group before the head of state. It was resolved that the cabinet minister handles the Mungiki in the best way he knew how, but to strictly leave state house out of it.
But if state house vetoed the deal with the Waruingi faction, another faction led by the group’s chairman Maina wa Njenga, now in custody, went ahead and cut a deal with the Orange group.
The deal with the Orange camp was struck, we can disclose, when Gem MP, Jakoyo Midiwo, took the Maina group for a night-long meeting at the Karen home of a key opposition leader and presidential hopeful.
At the Karen meeting, arrangements were made to facilitate Maina’s faction to take the “No” campaign to central Kenya and parts of the Rift valley province.
Information availed to us would indicate Mungiki’s cosy alliance with respective political groupings began much earlier in 1998 at the height of ethnic killings in Laikipia and Njoro areas.
It is the same cabinet minister who attempted to take Mungiki to state house during the referendum campaign who arranged the very first meeting between Mungiki leaders and retired president Moi in June 1998. The meeting was at the former president’s private residence in Kabarak, Nakuru district.
The meeting came about, we are informed, after Moi feared that opposition leaders, especially in the then opposition Democratic party, were planning to fund Mungiki as a counter force to perpetrators of the ethnic clashes in Njo and Laikipia where government agents were widely suspected to have a hand.
Prior to the Kabarak meeting, about 50 opposition MPs led by the then official leader Mwai Kibaki had converged at Sipili village in Laikipia district for a mass burial of 19 victims of the ethnic clashes in Laikipia.
At the highly charged burial presided by catholic bishop Nicodemus Kirima, opposition MPs openly declared they would arm Mungiki to defend the people of Laikipia and Njoro from attackers who they alleged were organized and funded by the then Kanu government.
One of the speakers at the Sipili meeting, the then Molo opposition MP, the late Kihika Kimani, openly stated that the opposition would be raising money to buy AK ‘47s for Mungiki which he said were going for a “mere Shs 10,000 a piece in Eastleigh!”
Sources say that after tapes of the speeches at Sipili were re-played to Moi at state house, Nakuru, he instructed the then state house controller, the late Wilson Chepkwony, to immediately summon the then key opposition leader, now a cabinet minister.
In a meeting with Moi, the opposition leader is alleged to have agreed to organize a meeting between the president and top Mungiki leadership at Kabarak the following weekend.
Also at the Kabarak meeting, we are informed, were the then chief executive of the Kenya Power company, Samuel Gichuru, and the then chairman of the Cooperative Bank, Hosea Kiplagat.
Our sources say that Moi began by exonerating his government from involvement in the ethnic clashes which were then raging in the Rift Valley and said that he had already given his security officers five days to end the clashes or they face the sack. Sure enough, the ethnic clashes stopped and were not to be heard of again in the remaining four years of Moi presidency.
At the Kabarak meeting, Moi allegedly expressed his wish to work with Mungiki pledging a handsome monetary ‘assistance’ which he said Gichuru would be delivering in a weeks’ time. Again, as promised, some Shs 5 million changed hands in the course of the week.
After the Kabarak meeting, Moi is said to have flung open the state house doors and those of his private residences to Mungiki.
Recalls a former key Mungiki leader: “At the Kabarak meeting, Moi instructed Gichuru and the then opposition leader (now a senior cabinet minister) to be taking us to see him any time we wanted to. We were never denied an appointment whenever we requested it.”
But the Mungiki leadership did not abandon the opposition leadership altogether.
Sources allege that Mungiki continued to deal with both sides until 2002 elections when Moi prevailed on the sect leaders to exclusively back his chosen heir, Uhuru Kenyatta.
In a meeting at state house, Nakuru, in August 2002, discloses a source, Moi is alleged to have vowed he would work ‘day and night’ to ensure Uhuru presidency would become a reality. He then asked the Mungiki leadership to completely cut links with the opposition, especially Mwai Kibaki’s DP which he said was doomed.
He is said to have assured Mungiki that state house would be there for them on a 24 hour basis. To prove he meant business, he introduced his then private secretary, Joshua Kulei, to Mungiki leaders and asked them to feel free to meet Kulei as his representative any time they needed assistance.
A follow-up meeting to the one in August is said to have come in November 2002, a month to the election, at Kabarak.
This time round, disclose sources, Moi allegedly made a curious introduction in the name of the then deputy army commander in charge of the Gilgil based western brigade, Gen John Koech.
A source at the meeting says heads turned all over the place when Moi said Koech was part of the group that was working ‘to ensure Uhuru became the next president of Kenya.’
At the meeting, Moi also gave Mungiki five ex-military Land Rovers for use in the Uhuru campaign. Gen Koech services in the military were unceremoniously terminated immediately the Narc government came to power.
Sources say that in the last few weeks to the December 29, 2002 poll, Mungiki leaders met Kulei for de-briefing at least once a week. ‘Something small’ always changed hands as facilitation for the Uhuru campaign.
In the meantime, aspiring candidates in the then Narc opposition party especially in Thika, Murang’a and Nakuru made private arrangements for Mungiki to throw its weight behind them in their respective constituencies.
Indeed Mungiki openly campaigned for opposition candidates in Juja, Kiharu and Maragwa among other constituencies in Central province.
The parting of ways came when Narc came to power in 2003 and officially declared war on Mungiki. Sources however indicate that influential leaders from Central province and elsewhere remained close to Mungiki leadership even as the crackdown went on.
Yet there was another reason why Mungiki could not go away despite the official ban and purported police crackdown.
Because of the political patronage it enjoyed, Mungiki also became deeply entrenched within the country’s security apparatus.
Sources say on noting the kind of political company Mungiki leaders kept, security chiefs decided to join the party and too became beneficiaries of the largesse the sect leaders got from politicians or extorted from the public mainly at PSV termini.
Sources say, at least four district police heads in Central province and two divisional commanders in Nairobi are on a generous take form respective Mungiki cartels operating in their areas.
Says a Mungiki leader who did not want to be named: “Just how can the government expect to finish us when not less than 6 OCPDs in Nairobi and neighbouring districts are in our payroll?”
Sources say any effort to crackdown on Mungiki will always hit a brick wall as long as senior policemen have a financial stake in the existence of Mungiki, just as sitting MPs-at least 8 including a cabinet minister-have a political stake in Mungiki.
Posted by Karuga wa Njuguna
Published by Korir, African Press International (API)/ African Press in Norway (APN) africanpress@chello.no tel +47 932 99 739 or +47 6300 2525
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