Was Robert Ouko shot in State House?

On a follow-up to our last posting (‘MP Gor Sungu forced to apologise over false claims, fined Sh3 million’) and in response to a couple of queries from readers, we answer the question, ‘Was Dr Ouko killed in State House?’

The question arises because it was the theory Gor Sungu came up with in the conclusion to the Parliamentary Select Committee’s report into the murder of Dr Ouko. And the answer? The answer is no, it could not have happened that way.

The forensic evidence of the Scotland Yard team brought in to investigate Ouko’s murder proved that he was shot where his body was found, and that eye-witness testimony proved he was murdered on the morning of 13th February, 1990. Dr Ouko wasn’t taken to State House or anywhere else: there wasn’t time for it to have happened and the forensic evidence would have been very different if it had have happened that way.

Kenya, in other news

So often when reading our newspapers in Kenya one is left wondering “Why?”, “How come?” or “I’ll believe that when I see it!”

On June 13 the ‘Business Pictorial’ of The Daily Nation carried a photograph of Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) chairman Martin Wambora receiving an award on Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) being voted ‘Best Airport in Africa’. Now go back to Monday of this week and JKIA was yet again shut down because of a ‘power outage’. This time the disruption could last days according to news reports and planes full of passengers are stranded around the airports of East Africa.

For those familiar with flying into JKIA this scenario too will be familiar. Don’t get us wrong, Entebbe is a nice place to visit but not to just sit on its runway when you wanted to be back in Nairobi. Still, KAA won that award.

Kenya Airways is the country’s flagship air carrier. It too keeps winning awards. How often have you flown KQ to be told that the in-flight entertainment system isn’t working?

On Thursday, The Daily Nation carried a picture of a flaming pile of ivory with President Kibaki holding the torch that had set off the conflagration. The ivory, 4.9 tonnes of it, had been confiscated from poachers. Well the poachers need to be caught and taught a lesson says The Forum but why burn the elephant tusks? 4.9 tonnes of ivory must be worth a fair few shillings that could have been used for better purposes. Why burn it?

In the “I’ll believe that when I see it” category, The Standard reported on its front page on Monday that Presidential, Senatorial and Parliamentary ‘aspirants’ will have to get a ‘certificate of compliance’ from the Integrity Centre in future to be able to stand for election and that the ‘life-style and conspicuous consumption of corrupt public and elected officials will not be exempt from the prying eyes of anti-graft police.’

All well and good says The Forum but try this for a thought. In 1952, Jomo Kenyatta was arrested by the British colonial authorities. He was found ‘guilty’ in 1953 and sentenced to seven years in jail. Some time later Mzee Kenyatta’s land in Kiambu was confiscated. The British authorities recorded it as being 31.24 acres. Today, 57 years later, the Kenyatta’s are reputed to own 2.4 million acres, land the size of Nyanza Province. What chance of Uhuru Kenyatta being barred from the election do you think?

And the world’s media is talking and writing of many things, phone tapping in England, economic collapse in Europe, and the terrible drought affecting Somalia and North Eastern Kenya. How come the Kenyan media have said and written so little about the thousands of people coming across our borders and the hundreds dying daily? Again we ask, “Why not?”