Why you should heed editor’s warning on con artists

The weekly farming magazine Seeds of Gold published in the Saturday Nation is very popular with farmers and "agripreneurs". It is both a how-to publication as well as a marketplace where buyers and producers meet. Whether you are buying lemongrass seedlings or Kuroiler fertilised eggs, selling pedigree Friesian dairy cows or tilapia fingerlings, or seeking a farm manager and so on, Seeds of Gold is all you need.

However, the editor prints the following warning: “No quails and land, please. Ensure you carry out due diligence before parting with goods or cash. ... Be careful with people who ask for more to give your tenders”.

It looks like no amount of warning will deter some con artists from venturing into this “green market” or prevent some readers from being taken for a ride. As I keep saying, nobody is immune from being con artistry. But it would surely help to heed the editor’s warnings.

A farm manager recently travelled all the way from Limuru to Kilifi to take up a new job. But on arrival, and this is before the Madaraka Express, he was told no such farm exists, that he was the sixth person who had travelled to Kilifi for a nonexistent farm manager’s job in a farm that does not exist. He had travelled by bus and apart from the time he wasted and the travel expenses, he had paid Sh5,000 to the conman for a medical examination.

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Propose solution and avoid rhetoric

Many readers ask me how they can get their commentaries published in the Nation. There is no one single answer and occasionally I get excellent pieces of advice from readers. This week I received one from Ben Njenga who says that every commentary should clearly analyse the problem, propose viable solutions and avoid empty or meaningless politics. “We get more than our healthy share of empty rhetoric, name calling, and pedestrian ideas from politicians, and the clueless, crude and ignoramus KOT gangs; we don’t need more of that from a reputable newspaper,” he says.

I did not bother to ask Mr Njenga what "KOT" means. They could be fans of the Russian football player Igor Kot, “Kings of Thieves”, “Kenyans on Twitter” or stray cats. The message was clear. He cited the article “Key issues at play as the great national maize debate rages” by Robert Shaw published on Monday, as an example of a good commentary. “Every article you publish should be like the one written today by Mr Robert Shaw,” he says.

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Unproven claims against Maina Kiai

In my article, “Why opinion writers including editorial staff must be identified”, I quoted Dr Obuya Bagaka complaining that the Nation does not identify certain columnists whom he said are essentially purveyors of partisan propaganda. He said Maina Kiai was one of them: “Maina Kiai devotes the vast proportion of his articles to criticising the IEBC but does not mention his active role in partnership with the British High Commissioner in a partisan role during the counting of votes at Bomas in 2013”.

Mr Kiai denies the claim, especially the insinuation that “I was trying to somehow meddle with the process at Bomas. Pray how would that be done anyway? By someone with no power, or access?” In March 2013, the Jubilee coalition accused the British High Commissioner “in cahoots with one Maina Kiai” of pressurising the IEBC to include invalid votes to be counted as part of the overall tally that would determine whether the winning presidential candidate gets the 50 per cent plus one vote threshold.

High Commissioner Cristian Turner and Mr Kiai denied the allegation in a story headlined “UK denies claims of partiality in polls” (Nation, March 6, 2013). I should have mentioned that Mr Kiai had denied the claims. The omission is regretted.

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