How State House men missteped

If only the walls of Nairobi’s State House, Kenya’s seat of power, had ears, eyes and a tongue. That was my regret when news filtered in that four directors of the presidential media outfit had turned up at the iron-gates only to be told to go back home.

That must have been the rudest shock ever for the men who have worked around the President for at least four years.

To rub salt onto injury, State House Chief of Staff Nzioka Waita, who is keen on introducing a business-like corporate culture at State House, told them “the details would be explained” once Mr President got back from Botswana.

The affected were Mr Kenyatta’s social media Moran, Dennis ‘Ole’ Itumbi, chief of messaging Eric Ng’eno, branding and events director James Kinyua and my former colleague Munyori Buku, who was in charge of public communications.

An insider in Jubilee whispered to me that to protect the Presidency from embarrassment, they would be deployed to the Ministry of Information, Communications and Technology under Joseph Mucheru, the former head of Google in Sub-Saharan Africa.

If this doesn’t tell you anything, at least it should alert you that they haven’t completely left, and you just need to watch cyberspace when the presidential campaigns get murkier. I can bet their services will be needed to throw mud at opponents, which they excel in doing more than in the rigours of diplomacy and statecraft.

Their exit bring to mind the arrest at Harambee House of former Internal Security Permanent Secretary Wilfred Kimalat. This was a powerful gum-chewing figure in the Nyayo Era, who held the provincial administrators by the calf of the legs. When he was implicated in graft, plainclothes police officers, ‘acting on orders from above’, turned up at his office. The secretary reportedly asked if they had an appointment and learning that they had none, Kimalat’s security guys came and demanded they leave.

Guns may have been drawn, but eventually, reason prevailed and he was alerted he had ‘visitors’. Word has it that he tried the hotline to State House but couldn’t reach former President Daniel arap Moi or any of those close to power then. Reading the ominous signs on the wall, he complied, and just sought one request: “Let me walk freely, don’t embarrass me in front of my juniors.” Not long before that, the then Head of Civil Service Phillip Mbithi had learnt that he had been fired when the list of officers to be moved or sacked he helped compile at State House was read on the dreaded KBC 1 o’clock news.

Under Mr Kenyatta, the person who suffered the biggest shock is Anne Waiguru, the former Devolution CS. She had been caricatured as the untouchable drama queen of the Cabinet. She put up a brave face even as the carpet was pulled underneath her feet.

Today, she may just be busy monitoring her bank balances and the health of her property empire, even as she is deluded by friends that dumb Nairobians can elect her Governor of the capital city. Some in previous regimes have gone, some like Kiraitu Murungi made a comeback but other ‘untouchables’, like Chris Murungaru, were dispatched to watch the sunset whilst concentrating on their livestock’s semen-harvesting and export trade.

So what mistake did our four friends make? Because of the role they played in the 2012/13 campaigns, they failed to draw the line between the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ President Kenyatta. They still saw in him what that missing blogger used to claim; a man from whose cigarette packet you could pick a stick. This access to the President made them feel superior to the people occupying higher positions than them in State House and Harambee House.

They seemingly failed to draw the line between the candidate and the President (the symbol of national unity) they started spitting at anyone they felt was on the ‘other side’.

They ‘decided’ what opinion they ought to project of the President, at times without consulting him. Examples abound, but the ones that broke the camels’ back included the statement that William Ruto was Mr Kenyatta’s candidate in 2022 and the ‘heavy’ one against the New York Times over the ICC and State House story.

One of them made it known that he wrote the President’s speeches (something that cost Ouma Muga his Cabinet post in the Nyayo era). Mr Itumbi became a social media war veteran, from where you would think his brief was to cure Kenya of a pandemic called Railaphobia. What he forgot was that Mr Kenyatta may not like Raila Odinga, but would go all out to warm the cockles of his (Mr Odinga’s) supporters.

Their fall began a long time ago and their work stations had been moved from State House to some wing in Mr Ruto’s office. They also forgot that the President couldn’t run two campaigns: one for himself and another for Ruto in 2022.

Those who work for politicians must never forget that the most important interest to them is their own and when you become a liability, they just shove you down the drain. Of course they give you a soft landing and blame others for your removal.

The hotline, as Kimalat found out long ago, also goes dead. That is what exactly happens to guys who miss the lines of a song and end up being heard still singing when the performance ends.