Why Ali Hassan Joho must work with the government

Glass houses have a habit of throwing stones at their owners, especially when they are hesitant to work with the government.

The flattering exposure of historical injustices suffered by Mombasa Governor Ali Hassan Joho through academic marginalisation in national examinations is a case in point.

Mr Joho has been forced to take belated pride in his high school grades despite perfervid efforts to bury the past in a mountain of university degrees.

After a four-year chase in the courts in Kenya and Uganda by political opponents, public-spirited individuals and well-wishers, it is the government – with the two lions on the coat of arms, two spears, a shield, a cockerel and an axe – that is bringing the quarry home.

Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s president of 37 years, has previously warned people against using the middle finger to plumb the nether parts of a leopard. Poking the rear of two lions and a cockerel would be excessive folly.

KETHI KILONZO

Only four years ago, lawyer Kethi Kilonzo was on the doorstep of the Senate as the first elected woman until the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission discovered that her voter registration acknowledgement slip had been stolen. The IEBC did not stop there in preventing her from succeeding her father, Mr Mutula Kilonzo, as Makueni Senator. It dug into her academic record at the University of Nairobi to introduce someone quite at variance with the person television watchers of the presidential election petition at the Supreme Court had fallen in love with. Her exuberance had caused her to decline an invitation to seek her father’s seat on the new Jubilee administration’s ticket. Her brother is the Senator. She is not.

For all her eloquence as advocate for Gladwell Otieno and Zahid Rajan in the Supreme Court petition seeking to nullify the election of Uhuru Kenyatta as President, Ms Kilonzo is still tied up in courts on the charge of stealing a Sh50 voter acknowledgment slip.

Her poking around the cause of her father’s death ended when it was discovered that samples taken from his organs had been opened before they reached the laboratory in the United Kingdom, thus locking the matter in the realm of mystery.

Mr Joho and Ms Kilonzo’s troubles are no different from those of others of similar ilk.

TAKING MONEY

Lawyer Gitobu Imanyara won Sh15 million in damages for two-year stint in Kamiti Maximum Security Prison for taking a client’s money even when the Law Society of Kenya said the claims were groundless. Mr Stanley Shapashina Oloitiptip went to jail for running an unhygienic eatery in Loitoktok; and Mr Stanley Munga Githunguri almost went to prison for flouting foreign exchange rules.

Eldoret MP Chelagat Mutai was jailed for two-and-a-half years for incitement, and had to flee to Dar-es-Salaam when a mileage claims case was brought against her. These, among many others, had the temerity to poke the government in the wrong places.

Numerous people with humble academic records are serving the government, like the executive director of the Non-Governmental Organisations Coordination Board, Mr Fazul Mohamed, whom the Ombudsman says left university before satisfying the requirements for a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry. Kapseret MP Oscar Sudi is facing charges of multiple certificate forgery but he is not losing sleep because he is covered by the blanket of government.

Given that Mr Joho operates in a sea of ordinary school performance that is the coastal region, his towering academic prowess could easily intimidate the very people whose support for him stands at 62 per cent in opinion polls. An important first step would be to repair his broken relationship with the government so that further questions about his taxes and involvement in the pharmaceutical trade can dissipate into thin air.

[email protected]