The man who gave merry-makers hell this festive season

By ALPHONCE SHIUNDU

If there’s one person who has dominated news headlines and the public discourse for the last two months, then the anti-alcohol crusader John Mututho takes the cake.

The teetotaler who drinks water and tea most of the time, and who will buy his pals “only two beers” survived censure attempts on his appointment in the National Assembly, twice, to get the job.

When he got the job, Mututho hit the ground running and as the curtain comes down on the year 2013, he will go down as the man who gave merry-making Kenyans hell this Christmas – but then, he can also sit back and smile with the knowledge that he saved some lives.

The Alcoholic Drinks Control Act, eponymously known as the ‘Mututho laws’, sends shivers down the spines of many bar patrons. It gives the police sweeping powers to arrest “any person found to be drunk and incapable or drunk and disorderly in or near a street, road, licensed premises, shop, hotel or other public place”.

The man threatened the party mode this festive season when he asked people to recognise their limits.

He also notified people about temporary licences to sell alcohol away from their premises.

Police officers took the cue and reintroduced the breathalyser (alcoblow) to keep drunk drivers off the country’s roads.

Just last week, Mututho made a trip to Migori. A few days later, a 10-acre bhang plantation was uprooted.

“When those peddlers heard that I was in town, they must have feared. I told the local adminstrators that I want them to crack down on bhang and other drugs,” Mututho told The Standard in an interview.

A fortnight before the Migori trip, he had visited Eldoret and closed down a bar because of licensing infractions. He’s headed to Eastern, then to Coast regions to keep an eye on the drinking habits.

The former Naivasha MP, who drunkards love to hate, has also come up with a controversial plan to have all the bars, restaurants and hotels that sell alcohol in major urban centres to be fitted with closed-circuit television cameras.

The cameras will then be linked to the Kenya Police command centre. The idea, according to people familiar with the plan, is to help authorities hunt down criminals in bars and to keep tabs on the opening and closing hours.

When President Uhuru Kenyatta picked Mututho for the job of chairman of National Authority for the Campaign Against Drug Abuse, it had skipped his advisors that the law required parliamentary approval for such a sensitive post.

But Mututho, afraid of being branded a secret backdoor appointee, approached President Kenyatta’s senior advisors and asked them to tell the President to cancel his appointment and submit his name to the National Assembly for approval.

The President cancelled the appointment. The drunkards and alcoholics in the country celebrated, because, they knew the watchman of their drinking habits had been fired.

But the President ruined the celebrations when he submitted the name to the National Assembly for approval.

In the House, the former Naivasha MP dodged a caveat that the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission had placed on his suitability for the job, when he quietly lobbied lawmakers to approve his name.

In the letter to the National Assembly, EACC Chief Executive Halakhe Waqo had told MPs to keep Mututho out of office until a case of Sh41 million against the former lawmaker was concluded.

The committee that vetted him agreed with the EACC. But then, when the matter came to the floor of the House, Mututho survived. The chairman of the House Committee on Administration and National Security, Asman Kamama, backed him.

“This case, which has been in existence forever, should not be used as the basis to deny a passionate person who wants us to have a clean society and young people given an opportunity by prohibiting drinking and use of drugs,” noted David Gikaria (Nakuru Town East).

Even the Majority Leader Adan Duale backed Mututho that day.

Mututho has reread his law, and he’s telling police officers on what to do. If you are inebriated beyond control, you can be arrested. The fine for that is Sh500 or a three-month jail term.

If a barman is keen to cash in on the festive mood and drown people in alcohol, he also risks arrest.

“Any licensee who sells an alcoholic drink to a person already in a state of intoxication or by any means encourages or incites him to consume an alcoholic drink commits an offence,” reads a clause in the law, that goes ahead to prescribe a maximum fine of Sh500,000 or a maximum jail term of three years will be slapped on the barman for the offence.

Mututho has also made Nacada to launch a fresh investigation into authenticity of licences of bars in Nairobi.

Nacada’s auditors have been working overtime to determine the genuine licences and the fake ones. Apparently, there’s a cartel within Nacada that has been issuing genuine licences, without recording the licence fees in the official records.

For example, in Nairobi County, there were at least 23,000 outlets selling alcohol which were not in the Nacada records. The total number of alcohol outlets in the city is estimated at 30,000.

ashiundu@standardmedia.co.ke