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The cop who almost emptied his pistol on Sir Charles Njonjo opens up

 

Departed Kenyatta and Moi era powerful Attorney General and power broker and later, Constitutional Affairs minister Charles Njonjo did many outrageous things, but one almost got him shot dead in his office in Nairobi.

It was in January 1981 and Sir Charles had just finished dressing down two senior public officials and a youthful middle level ranking police officer. Kenya Airways had just sent him an invoice for Sh36,272.50 — a hell lot of cash back then — for excess luggage. In his fury, Njonjo called an urgent meeting in his office. Not to clear the invoice but to express his disgust at those pursuing him.

At the meeting were Transport and Communications Permanent Secretary Simon Mbugua, Kenya Airways Managing Director Andrew Cole (Later Lord Cole of Enniskillen) and KQ Security Services Manager, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Esau Kihumba Kioni.

The meeting had been called at short notice and Kioni had been summoned from his office at Embakasi by Cole. He was out of breath when he arrived at the office and on introducing himself, Njonjo’s white secretary sneered at him.

“The minister has been waiting for you,” Kioni told the Njonjo Commission of Inquiry, national public humiliation that Njonjo was taken through by the government of a man he  thought he had installed in power — former president Daniel Arap Moi — to cut him down to size.

Back to the KQ saga, Kioni recalls that Njonjo welcomed him at the door of his office.

“Ingira Kioni. Ngui ino undakaritie muno (Get in you dog Kioni. I am totally disgusted with you),” he recalls Njonjo ushering him into the office where Lord Cole and PS Mbugua were already cowering from their seats.

“I was thrown off balance first because I had never heard him speak Kikuyu and he was trembling badly,” Kioni recalls of that nasty meeting.

He said he told Njonjo that he was a “human dog” and that as long as they were speaking, he believed they would have an amicable settlement.

“What do you have to say,” Njonjo proceeded to ask Kioni who then elaborately explained how the invoice had come up before concluding that his two bosses had all the power to overrule it.

According to the evidence adduced at the commission, Njonjo had been on a KQ flight traveling with 300 kilograms of baggage between London and Nairobi. This was nine times above the 30 kilogrammes allowed by the airline. Kioni told the Commission that one of his security staff brought this to his attention and when he checked it out with Mr Todd who worked at the account department and the London Office, it confirmed the excess baggage had not been paid for.

Todd took the matter up with airline Chief Accountant Edward Ntalami who then asked Lord Cole whether Njonjo should be invoiced for the same.

“You can go ahead and invoice him,” Ntalami told the commission was Lord Cole’s response.

The invoice went unpaid and shortly thereafter, Njonjo called the meeting on January 21, 1981 with the three. According to Kioni, with his chin on his hand, Njonjo had listened keenly and appeared taken aback by his elaborate response.

“Get out of my office and go clear your mess at Kenya Airways,” is how Njonjo dismissed this parade.

As Mbugua and Lord Cole filed out, Kioni said he was disappointed and annoyed and confronted Njonjo at the door.

“Sir, I have an issue,” he says he told Njonjo who was taken aback and welcomed him back to the office.

“At this point I was furious and ready to empty my 15 rounds of ammunition on the AG if he insulted me,” he recalled of the incident.

But a calm and naturally intelligent Njonjo allowed him to sit and Kioni insisted that he wanted an assurance that he would not be haunted out of his job as he was already aware that Njonjo was a ruthless man who clamped down on rivals with mercy.

Kioni told Njonjo in Kikuyu that some people were trying to use him (Njonjo) as a Caterpillar tractor to crush a fly like him. Njonjo assured him that all would be well and asked him to return back to his job without fear. It would be a ruse. Four days later, Lord Cole called him for a meeting at the lobby of the Hilton and proceeded to serve him a letter terminating his contract at KQ “because he had been under considerable pressure.”

Kioni then returned to the Nyati House, the Special Branch Headquarters which had seconded him to Kenya Airways. But he was only weeks in his old job when he was served with another letter retiring him in the public interest.

But when he protested, he was handed another letter retiring him to allow government reorganisation of the department — a sort of redundancy that could not be challenged in court. Kioni later got a warning through another ruthless Njonjo ally — the Deputy Director of Criminal Investigations Ignatius Nderi — that the AG had decreed that he must leave the city.

“I was heartbroken but my wife advised me to heed the warning. I loaded my belongings into two pick-ups and moved to Kiambere jungle where I bought out a white man who was running a juggle camp with a zip line across the Tana River,” he recalls.

He busied himself with purchase of honey in Mbeere and across the river in Ukambani which he would sell by drums in Riakanau market in  Mbeere South. He would be holed here for the next few years visiting his family from 11.00 pm and leaving at 5.00am.

Then in 1983 he heard on the radio that Njonjo had been named the “msaliti” and a commission of Inquiry formed to probe him. Kioni testified before the Commission which found that Njonjo “had acted to the prejudice and calamitous detriment of Essau Kihumba Kioni in misuse of his office as minister.”

Kioni said he was 40 years old when he was haunted out of employment.

“My two sons were at Lenana High School and another was at Kagumo High School. I did not know what to do about it,” he recalls.

It would not be until Njonjo was humiliated out of office that he could get out of the shadows and try his hands in city business. But his lucky moment had come as he hid in the Kiambere jungle when the Tana and Athi Rivers Development Authority (Tarda) arrived to survey the land where the Seven Forks dams were set up.

He had won a contract to help in bush clearance of a 100 metre wide path across 70 kilometres to allow earlier survey for which he earned Sh300,000, a huge amount of cash those days. Kioni later worked for Security Kenya after being headhunted by JP Forster who he had met while at KQ. He rose to senior levels of the company and among their clients was opposition leader Mwai Kibaki.

Kibaki would hire Kioni as Security Adviser and Coordinator. Kioni says the Head of Public Service Geoffrey Kareithi had sent him to KQ so that he could keep an eye on textile and game trophy smuggling.

He believes Njonjo profiled him as a Nyeri resident from Kibaki’s Othaya backyard and must have known about his brief from Kareithi from his partners. BY THE STANDARD MEDIA

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