'Anguka Nayo' produces massive earthquake as a scribe nabbed at station

Macharia Gaitho during a press conference at IPOA offices in Upper Hill on July 17, 2024. [Kanyiri Wahito, Standard]

I wanted to write about the hit-song, Anguka Nayo, whose reverberations echoed across the world, producing an earthquake in its wake, but another quake was reported when Musalia Mudavadi aka MaDvD was appointed Chief Cabinet Secretary.

That’s to say the much-desired austerity measures are firmly in place: Instead of the 22 Cabinet members who were sent home a week ago, we shall now have one Cabinet Secretary by the name MaDvD. That’s quite some saving, I wanted to celebrate, not just in monetary terms, but also because the appointment would whittle down the din generated by Gen-Z protesters.

But before I could settle down to the task, another quake rocked the nation: a mellow, bearded man, who once served as my boss, Macharia Gaitho, was abducted, as our people like to emphasize, in broad daylight. This means the attack was so brazen that those nefarious characters made no effort to hide it.

Even more astonishing, he was abducted within the precincts of the Karen Police Station, where he had gone to report a suspicious vehicle that had trailed him from his home. Within minutes, the news scattered to the four directions of the wind not just because of the manner or place of abduction, but because of who was involved.

Truth be told, it would be a waste of time for anyone to assume they would get any intelligence by interrogating Gaitho, who we called MG in the newsroom, because he writes what he thinks, and I would say that’s true of most mellow, bearded scribes.

In any case, they say intelligence must be gathered intelligently. What followed was - and I have to admit I am selecting my words very carefully- pretty asinine. Yaani, sheer upumbavu.

I expected the government to speak with courage and conviction and say something along these lines: “On the instruction of the office of the National Intelligence Service, our officers conducted an operation around the Karen area of Nairobi at 08.00 hours with the intent of nabbing a certain bearded chap writing very annoying columns in local press.

“The motive for the operation was multi-pronged: To intimidate the chap and his ilk in the media, who operate as though they are above the law, scare away potential copycats and lastly, communicate to the media that none of them is above State retribution.”

This sort of communication would leave no doubt that a bit of thinking had gone into planning and execution of the abduction, and the government would come out looking crude, but not daft. Now, both attributes apply.

Here’s why: the narrative about MG’s abduction being a case of mistaken identity assumes that the police officers would have treated him a lot more crudely if he were the proper target.

Secondly, if the government construes a man in his 60s to be a Gen-Z suggests a more fundamental flaw in the quality of information circulating around, giving credence to the comments from Rigathi Gachagua aka Riggy G, not too long ago. He said the NIS have no idea what’s going on.

But I don’t trust this assessment from Riggy G. The other Gaitho, the alleged proper target of arrest is known for pro-government posts on social media, so his noisy targeting is a pseudo-operation that will hoodwink only the NIS. Bure kabisa.