There's no way Maina Njenga could have given Uhuru oath

Wild claims are the stock-in-trade of the Mungiki sect and its discredited leadership.

Only this week, extravagant claims were published in the American newspaper TheNew York Times, saying that former Mungiki leader Maina Njenga personally administered the oath of loyalty on President Uhuru Kenyatta.

Even the longest stretch of the imagination cannot accommodate the vision of the urbane, Amherst-educated President Kenyatta sitting butt-naked on raw sheepskin as he is sprinkled with goat blood, slapped around with vine leaves and ordered to henceforth go forth without undergarments, to sniff snuff and follow the orders of the Mungiki leader.

As if to stretch credulity to breaking point, it is also claimed that the Mungiki also administered the oath of allegiance on former President Mwai Kibaki – as well as to many other politicians from central Kenya.

Granted, then Kigumo MP Kihara Mwangi claimed in January, 2007 that a group of lawmakers from central Kenya were kidnapped by armed Mungiki members and forced to take an oath of allegiance to the sect, but it is difficult to imagine how Mr Kenyatta and Mr Kibaki could be taken hostage.

The horrible oath, which swears members to secrecy, is designed to promote unity within the tribe, and a pledge of absolute loyalty to the Mungiki. Those who take the oath are told they will be killed if they violate the oath or leave the organisation.

Mr Njenga has desperately clung onto Mr Kenyatta’s political coattails like a tick on a cow – unwanted yet persistent. Back in 2002 when Mr Kenyatta first sought election as President, the Mungiki organised its own demonstration to show unwanted support for him and succeeded in discouraging many people from electing him.

In the aftermath of that election, in which Mr Kenyatta was so poorly viewed that he could only muster a third of all votes cast, Mungiki members killed at least 20 people in Nakuru in an attempt to get him jailed.

Thereafter, Mungiki members made wild confessions about how they had been supplied with 10 Land Rovers fitted with communication equipment by the military.

Mr Njenga was jailed for possession of drugs and a firearm until April 2007. After his acquittal, he was charged with 29 murders in Karatina, and was in capital remand, but the Mungiki has insisted on inserting him at the centre of the activities that defined the 2007/08 post-election violence.

It is this self-promotion and clinging to Mr Kenyatta that misled the International Criminal Court to interview Mr Njenga with a view to using him as a witness. Mr Njenga travelled to Gaborone in Botswana to record a statement with the ICC, but it is clear they wasted their money on him.

The pre-trial brief published by the ICC prosecutor claims that Mr Kenyatta also telephoned Maina Njenga directly while he was in jail, and sent intermediaries to make cash payments to him. It is incongruous how Mr Njenga could receive telephone calls when both his hands were in handcuffs, or even how he could keep money in a prison crawling with criminal elements detained for all sorts of crimes.

Those who claim that Mr Njenga continued to receive a constant stream of information about the organisation’s activities, made decisions on important matters and retained a veto power over the Mungiki think prison is a five-star hotel. Far from it, the man was being fed on a steady diet of beans, rice and weevils.

Since Mr Njenga is a bishop in his own Hope International Ministries Church, it is likely that his speech confuses visions with reality rather often.

Mr Njenga’s own right-hand man, Mr Ndura Waruinge, was wiser and declined the offer of Sh40 million to testify against Mr Kenyatta.

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