EXCERPTS from TREASON by MIGUNA MIGUNA:
[…] During the central committee discussions on November 28 at the Ducit Hotel in Westlands with Raila, Muthama, Orengo, Wanjigi, Raila, Jr., Winnie and Joho, the latter had strongly recommended that the swearing in should be in Kilifi. He said that the Miji Kenda were warriors, just like the Turkana, Pokot or Samburu, and that if the police or any other state security agents tried to disrupt the event in Kilifi, “the Mijikenda would unleash hell fire on them.”
I was, therefore, surprised when Muthama woke me up on Sunday, December 9, at 7:30 a.m., and asked me to attend a meeting at his house at 10:30 a.m. Before that call, I had thought that Raila had once more, developed cold feet and cancelled the swearing in. NASA and ODM politicians tended to take cue from Raila. If Raila was tepid towards something, his minions in NASA would exhibit the same attitude. Essentially, nothing of significance occurred without Raila’s approval. NASA and ODM before it, were mere personal outlets.
Orengo arrived thirty minutes after me. I spent the next five hours drafting Raila’s inaugural speech and finalized the oath, which were reviewed, corrected and approved by Muthama and Orengo, after which we entered one of Muthama’s old Mercedes Benz vehicles and were driven out to a destination, which, up to that moment, I did not know. At about 3 p.m., the vehicle pulled outside Wanjigi’s Muthaiga mansion. Wanjigi welcomed us to one of his lounges where we watched soccer, ate lunch and reminisced. After about fifteen minutes, Winnie arrived. She did not look happy. I soon realized that we were supposed to swear Raila in at Wanjigi’s house that afternoon.
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I asked for a printer and managed to print both the oath and speech. I had carried my commission stamp in my computer bag. We were all dressed in suits, as Muthama had asked us to do earlier. Although Wanjigi was not in a suit, I considered it a non-issue because we were in his home and he could change into one easily within minutes.
Raila, Jr. and his NASA TV crew had arrived earlier and set up their equipment in a separate wing of Wanjigi’s palatial home. At 3:30 p.m., Raila walked in, dressed in jeans, a casual shirt and sports jacket. He was on the phone.
We kept quiet and waited for him to finish. Thereafter, we greeted each other, he served himself food from the buffet, poured himself a cup of tea and started eating as he watched soccer. The Arsenal Football Club (Arsenal) was on TV. We all knew that when the Arsenal team was playing, Raila could not focus or hold any reasonable discussion outside cheering or criticizing the players. So, we waited for the game to end before engaging in any serious discussions.
When the Arsenal team finished playing, Orengo briefed Raila on the draft speech and oath. I handed Raila copies of both, which he glanced over quickly and made one minor correction, still distracted. I noticed that he did not actually read the speech up to the end. He placed a call and left the room, still speaking on his mobile phone.
It was now getting late and dark. Muthama, Orengo and I looked worried. Wanjigi was relaxed. Winnie was anxious. She could hardly sit still. But Raila seemed to be having a long discussion on the phone. After ten minutes of suspense, Orengo and Muthama left the room and walked on the grass towards the stone fence. Raila was standing about fifty metres away from them. Wanjigi, Winnie and I kept vigil inside the room.
“I don’t think he wants to be sworn in today,” Winnie said.
“Look at the way he is dressed,” she added.
After about ten minutes, Raila returned to the room where we were, with Muthama and Orengo following behind.
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“Mudavadi and Weta are insisting that we postpone… They are going to address the media at Okoa Kenya just now,” Raila said, sounding as if that decision was made without his knowledge or approval.
As soon as he said that, Muthama passed me his mobile phone.
“Breaking news! Raila’s swearing in on December 12 has been postponed,” I read from the Nation mobile news alert. We looked at each other — Orengo, Jimmy and me. We were thunderstruck.
Muthama tried to support the postponement, but Wanjigi and I did not let him get far. Orengo was blowing hot and cold. Winnie said nothing in front of Raila.
Wanjigi was livid, or so I believed. He reminded Raila of the expectations of millions of his supporters.
Then Mudavadi, Wetang’ula and Makueni Governor, Kivutha Kibwana came on TV.
Mudavadi was reading a statement. We watched and listened: “Following extensive internal consultations and engagements with a wide range of national and international interlocutors, the Nasa leadership wishes to advise the Nasa fraternity and the general public that the swearing in of the Right Honourable Raila Amolo Odinga and His Excellency Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka as President and Deputy President of the Republic of Kenya and the People’s Assembly. Scheduled for Tuesday, December 12, have been postponed to a later date,” he said.
“So, how could Kivutha have known about the press conference and travelled all the way from Makueni if this was not planned? Why was I woken up at 7:30 a.m. and asked to spend hours preparing these,” I said placing the speech and oath on the table.
Raila was seated to my immediate left. Orengo was to my immediate right. “Why come all the way here if you knew that you would not go through with it?” I asked Raila. I was livid.
Raila tried to give us excuses, claiming that Mudavadi, Wetang’ula and Kivutha acted alone; that they only informed him minutes before they had addressed the media. He also informed us about the visit by the former
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Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, whom he claimed had been sent to him by the African Union (AU). He said that he had told Obasanjo that he could not cancel the swearing in. I knew that Raila was peddling bald-faced lies. I would have believed him if only Mudavadi, Wetang’ula or Kibwana had addressed the press from their private offices or homes — individually. But the press conference we were watching on TV was jointly being addressed by two of Raila’s co-principles with Kibwana representing Kalonzo who was still in Germany. It was held at the OKOA Kenya office in the presence of Raila’s fifth columnists like Ndii, Ong’wen and Ole Kina.
As we were departing from Wanjigi’s home that evening — crestfallen — Raila beckoned to me.
“JaNyando,” he said sheepishly, as he held my hand and walked towards his Toyota V8 vehicle. He opened the left rear door and said, “You see?,” pointing at three suit bags, presumably with suits inside. “You see?” he repeated. “I had my suits ready. I was ready to be sworn in,” he said then he was driven away.
“He is lying,” Winnie blurted, walking towards me.
“He would never wear those suits for the swearing in ceremony, or to any important function. That was a ruse. Dad never wanted to be sworn in…”
The December 9 debacle at Wanjigi’s house reminded me of the colourful press conference at the OKOA Kenya centre that Ndii, Ong’wen, Ole Kina and Akala had addressed on December 2, loudly declaring that, “Raila Odinga’s swearing in is on course,” and that they were “sending out invitations to guests who would attend the event at a location to be announced later.”
I had considered the December 2 press conference to constitute enough evidence that Raila was involved in a duplicitous plan. Aside from the fact that Ndii, Ong’wen, Ole Kina and Akala were not members of the central committee, I had never attended any meeting with them where the swearing in plans were discussed. Moreover, the central committee had resolved to gun for a public event and only resort to a private one if the risks to life of participants would be such that it would not make sense to proceed with a
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public event. But even for a private function, we had agreed not to publicly announce the program, or issue invitation cards.
Perhaps they forgot that a swearing in ceremony for a president is a public — not a private function. And that if we were going to do it properly, it would have to be an open event that was accessible to everyone who wanted to attend. The People’s President could not hide from the very people he was seeking to lead. The only exception would be if or when the State security agents were ordered to disrupt, stop or sabotage it.
The NRMKe team had proposed that if we were unable to conduct the function in a public space such as Uhuru Park in Nairobi, which was the preferred venue, then we could do it at a Kenyan Embassy in Ghana or Tanzania. The second option was to hold it either in Kakamega, or Kilifi, or Mombasa. But we had never discussed or contemplated announcing our plans for a secret swearing in ahead of time. Not once.
However, when Orengo told me that Raila had asked him to speak with Magufuli, who opposed our swearing in plans, that had eliminated Tanzania from being a potential venue. According to Orengo, Magufuli believed that leadership was “a gift from God” and that if God had not given Raila that gift, there was no reason to pursue our plans and that Raila should forget about being sworn in as The People’s President.
In other words, Magufuli was of the view that God did not want Raila to be the president of Kenya. I found such statements to be outrageous. God had not manipulated the August 8, 2017 general election.
God had not established a weak IEBC, threatened and/or bribed its commissioners and secretarial staff. It was not God who had threatened the Kenyan judiciary. God was not guilty of switching off the IEBC kiems kits, infiltrating and posting altered numbers on the IEBC server, nor was God responsible for refusing to give access to the IEBC server as had been ordered by the Supreme Court of Kenya.
If Magufuli believed that leaders were born, I thought, then he was as backward as Donald J. Trump and other climate change/global warming deniers; people who believed in myths rather than science and empiricism. Those kinds of people would also believe in the caste system; that God created a few people to rule and the overwhelming majority to serve the rulers; that God made slaves and those who claimed to own them.
Such people also believed in the myth about “Africa’s curse.” They believed, irrationally, that God must have created Africa and Africans with low IQs, hence Africa’s military, economic, technological, scientific and economic backwards. Rather than seeing these as man-made, the myth makers believed that it was “God’s will.” […]
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