Kenya has posted a new high commissioner to the United Kingdom. Ephraim Waweru Ngare, 60, was transferred from Libya, where he was the ambassador. Mr Ngare arrived in London on Friday morning on a flight from Nairobi accompanied by his wife.

His arrival comes a week after the Sunday Nation highlighted the confusion at the London mission over the recall of high commissioner Joseph Muchemi. But the government remained mum over Mr Ngare’s appointment.

Information posted on the official commission website says he is the new high commissioner to the UK and Northern Ireland and Switzerland.

Knowledgeable sources said Mr Ngare was appointed to the prestigious diplomatic job in early October. It is unclear as to why the government has not made the appointment public.

“Announcing the appointment is a formality at the discretion of the appointing authority,” said a well-placed diplomatic source at the mission.

Normally, a despatch from the Presidential Press Service (PPS) or a press statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would announce such a high-profile appointment.

The appointment of high commissioners and ambassadors is a prerogative of the President. Addison Chebukaka, who has been the acting high commissioner, said he had handed over to the new envoy.

Born in Nyeri in 1949, Mr Ngare graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and government from Makerere University, Uganda, in 1973.

Is Attorney-General Amos Wako preparing to leave office? Interviews by the Sunday Nation found that after 18 years at the helm at the State Law Office, Mr Wako may soon call it a day.

Sources in legal circles have indicated that the AG intends to leave office in May next year “after overseeing the present reform agenda’’. But the ever-smiling lawyer last Thursday maintained that he would not resign. At least not yet, he said, and not at the behest of foreigners levelling accusations against him.

At a press conference where he told off the US Government for withdrawing his visa, Mr Wako said he would not bow to pressure from outside to leave office. He said he was a reformist and would only go home after ensuring that the reform agenda was concluded. But according to Law Society of Kenya chairman Okong’o Omogeni, the travel ban slapped on Mr Wako by the United States had made his functions untenable, and it was time for changes at the AG’s office.

“It’s a wake-up call to the government to really examine the reasons advanced by the American Government. The visa ban makes his position almost untenable. As an advisor to the government he needs free movement to be able to discharge his functions,” Mr Omogeni told the Sunday Nation.

Hard choices

“The time has come for the government to make hard choices and to care for its international reputation,” he said. In what would be a radical change from the past, LSK proposes that every new government appoint a new AG. The lawyers propose that the law be amended so that the appointment of the AG is subjected to parliamentary approval “to achieve wide and bipartisan acceptance’’.

“It’s easy to remove somebody … but how do you appoint someone who doesn’t have partisan interests? The office should be professional and politically non-partisan,” the LSK chairman said. “I would have, for an insurance … an amendment to the Constitution to give assurance that we are going to get the right kind of person for that job to serve posterity.”

He referred to the US system where the president nominates the AG and awaits congressional approval before appointing them to office. But Mr Wako’s confidantes with whom the Sunday Nation spoke said he is likely to stay on until May, the month that marks the 19th anniversary of his appointment.

Lawyers are proposing changes in the law to ensure that the next holder of the office is a person who does not wield too much power. International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) Kenya chairman Wilfred Nderitu said Mr Wako has been more of a politician than a lawyer. “It might even be better if the AG does not sit in Cabinet. I’d like to see an AG who has less powers in terms of terminating cases,” Mr Nderitu said.

The Constitution gives the AG powers to determine whether to prosecute a case and further powers to terminate a case at any stage before judgment is delivered. The law does not lay out parameters for the AG to use in that function. Mr Nderitu hopes that Mr Wako’s successor will be picked on the basis of integrity rather than expediency where politicians look to see whether “this is someone who can serve their interests’’.

The ICJ boss agrees with Mr Wako that the office of Director of Public Prosecutions should be delinked from that of the AG and the holder given a constitutional tenure of office. Other than on his own volition, an AG can only be removed from office if the President appoints a tribunal to investigate his conduct and if he is then found guilty of misconduct.

The tribunal could then recommend his sacking to the President, who could either take their advice or reject it. But Section 109 (4) of the Constitution says Parliament may set a retirement age for the AG. Since the clause was placed in the Constitution, Parliament has never set an age limit, which can be done through an Act of Parliament. LSK proposes that the AG’s age limit be 70 years, according to Mr Omogeni.

Mr Wako, who has said he looks to the East for spiritual nourishment, told the Sunday Nation soon after UN special rapporteur on human rights Philip Alston issued a blistering attack on his office that he had been to the Himalaya mountains to meditate. He spoke of a conspiracy to edge him out of the office he has occupied for close to two decades but said he was determined to see the constitution review come to a close before his departure.

Sources familiar with discussions in the corridors of power say that grand coalition partners ODM and PNU are consulting on who should succeed the 64-year-old Wako. It is understood that powerful men from both parties have been considering cutting a deal in which one partner nominates the candidate for the AG’s office and the other a successor to Chief Justice Evan Gicheru, should either leave office.

To be appointed, Mr Orengo would have to resign as MP and Lands minister. Another person who has been touted for the office is Solicitor General Wanjuki Muchemi. Mr Muchemi is viewed by lawyers in private and public practice as the “power behind the throne”. As Solicitor General, Mr Muchemi is in charge of all matters administrative and financial at the State Law Office and is rumoured to be eying his boss’s seat should it become vacant.

It is well known within legal circles that Mr Muchemi enjoys close relations with State House, and there are those who view that as an advantage when it comes to replacing Mr Wako. Though he is vastly experienced, having practised law for decades, Mr Muchemi’s hand is seen in the many decisions that have attracted an unfavourable assessment from those who have examined the successes and failures of the State Law Office.

The other key player in the State Law Office is Director of Public Prosecution Keriako Tobiko, the man who takes up court cases on behalf of the AG. Mr Tobiko has been in office since 2005 when the previous holder, Philip Murgor, was removed. Mr Tobiko took office and got into a quagmire.

He had been the lead defence lawyer representing former Kuresoi MP Zakayo Cheruiyot in an Anglo Leasing related case. The State ended up hiring private lawyers to prosecute the cases to avoid a conflict of interest. Mr Cheruiyot, the last Internal Security PS in the Moi administration, is charged alongside John Alao, a former finance secretary in the President’s Office, in connection with procurement of equipment for a CID forensic laboratory.

Mr Tobiko had already filed documents for the defence and applied to the High Court to defer the case by the time he was appointed DPP in mid-2005. Another candidate on the list for the powerful office of the AG, according to our sources, is Mr Murgor. He left the office in the heat of a controversy surrounding Tom Cholmondeley, the scion of British colonial aristocracy.

Mr Murgor alleged that he had been pushed out by powerful forces over the changes he had proposed as director of public prosecutions. Specifically, he seemed to have fallen out with police headquarters over proposals that the role of prosecution cases should be taken up by lawyers under him rather than police officers.

Special rapporteur

Another candidate whose name has been mentioned is law professor, Githu Muigai, who was appointed in March the UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. Prof Muigai also sat in the now defunct Constitution of Kenya Review Commission whose mandate ended following the constitutional referendum in November 2005.

Incidentally, Prof Muigai’s name is also mentioned as possible CJ. Another former CKRC commissioner, Mutakha Kangu, who is the head of the Department of Public Law at Moi University, is said to have featured on the list of possible candidates.

The long-awaited extradition of controversial London-based Kenyan preacher Gilbert Deya may happen soon, the Sunday Nation has learnt.

Impeccable sources confirmed that the preacher, who is wanted in Kenya on child-trafficking charges, is now a failed asylum seeker currently ordered to report weekly to Deptford police station in South London.

The new details of Mr Deya’s complex and costly legal tussle emerged on November 2, after it became apparent that he had exhausted all avenues of appeal in the United Kingdom. It is believed legal costs amounted to more than £1 million (Sh124 million).

“Deya’s extradition is not a question of if but when. He’s living on borrowed time; the net is finally closing in; he could be extradited from London before Christmas,” said a well-placed source.

He may be extradited to Nairobi under the Extradition Act 2003 on the request of the Kenya Government. The televangelist, who runs his Gilbert Deya Ministries from Ormside Road, Peckham, South London, with 34,000 followers, is now subjected to the Immigration Act 1971 – legislation that gives immigration officers power to detain a person who has been served notice of administrative removal from the UK.

He applied for political asylum in the UK in September 2004 claiming his life was in danger following reports that Kenyan authorities wanted to question him over child-trafficking allegations. The British Home Office turned down the application in 2006 although Mr Deya appealed the decision, forcing him to maintain a low profile until his dramatic arrest at a Sheriff’s Court in Scotland in June 2006.

In January 2008, the then British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith ordered Mr Deya to be extradited to Kenya over the alleged “miracle babies” scandal, but he moved to the High Court to challenge the extradition order. After the High Court in London dismissed his appeal, Mr Deya took his case to the Court of Appeal.

On November 27, 2008, two Court of Appeal judges sitting at the Royal Courts of Justice in London refused to grant him permission to appeal to the House of Lords against the order to extradite him to Kenya. House of the Lords served as the court of last resort in most instances of UK law until October 1, 2009, when this role was assumed by the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.

At the hearing of Case No CO/11637/2007 of Deya vs Government of Kenya (2008) at the Administrative Court of the Court of Appeal’s Civil Division, the Kenyan’s lawyers argued that his case should be certified as one raising issues of general public importance that should be considered by the Law Lords, but this was rejected by Lord Justices John Dyson and Griffith Williams who heard the appeal.

The Kenyan preacher said he would take the appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), but it emerged on November 3 that Deya’s legal team in London did not make the move as previously believed.

Extensive enquiries at ECHR offices in Strasbourg, France, confirmed that Mr Deya didn’t lodge an application to challenge the UK’s extradition order. “We don’t have an application in respect of Mr Deya at the ECHR,” said Celine Menu-Lange, an ECHR official in an email to the Sunday Nation on Tuesday.

Mr Deya is wanted in Kenya on five counts of abducting children aged between 22 months and four-and-a-half years between 1999 and 2004. His wife Mary Deya and two other women – Miriam Nyeko and Rose Kiserem – were jailed for two years in May 2007 by a Nairobi court for stealing a child.

The decision whether to extradite Mr Deya’s will be made by the UK Home Secretary Alan Johnson. A Home Office spokeswoman told the Sunday Nation: “We don’t comment on extradition matters because of legal and security reasons.”

In fighting extradition, Mr Deya has argued that he is the victim of a political vendetta in Kenya and said his human rights would be compromised by the poor conditions in Kenyan prisons. He said that before he came to Britain in 1996, he had publicly condemned the then Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi. “Speak against him and you will be killed,” he said, adding that “if I return, I will not receive a fair trial and I will be punished.”

The former stonemason, who has posted pictures of himself meeting the Queen and Prince Philip on his website, Mr Deya claims his powers have enabled 22 infertile women to have children. He claims that he has the power to give “miracle babies” to infertile and post-menopausal women members of his evangelical church.

Police in Nairobi say their investigations revolve around the disappearance of babies from Nairobi’s Pumwani Maternity Hospital and involve suspects in Britain, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya. When the Sunday Nation called the Kenyan’s South London offices, a woman demanded a donation before connecting this writer to Mr Deya.