Welcome to the fold, Bro Maina Njenga

This column salutes Mungiki leader Maina Njenga on his hard earned freedom. Sir, it was pleasant to watch you stride out in a sharp suit, looking hale and hearty, far from the broken man that your persecutors expected you to be after locking you up in the slammer for five years.

During your long, arduous incarceration, you ate lousy food, couldn’t even make a lousy phone call and your beloved wife was murdered in circumstances that you considered highly suspect and for which you blamed your persecutors who, unfortunately, you have refused to name and shame.

Given that the Attorney General has admitted that it was all a big mistake, one presumes that your lawyer will be suing the Government for, among other ills, wrongful arrest and confinement and to seek damages for housing policemen in your Kiserian residence without your permission.

It was particularly touching to see the exuberant manner in which your followers turned out to greet and salute you. It’s been long since Kenyans were treated to the spectacle of followers receiving their leaders with such pomp and unbridled joy, Bwana Chairman.

Confessions

You may not be aware but other leaders would merely address an empty stadium if they didn’t take the trouble to bus ‘supporters’ to a political party venue. Yours came out in full force, at their own cost. But that’s all water under the bridge.

Now that you are free and born again, perhaps the first thing to do is to lead your followers back to church a second time. Kenyans actually expected to see more than the snuff that your former comrades deposited at the altar of Hon Dr Bishop Wanjiru’s Church.

What they expected were heart-wrenching tears and confessions gory enough to shock hell out of the devil. They expected bloodstained machetes, axes, knobkerries and the many other tools and instruments that they imagine your followers have hitherto serenely employed to kowtow to the gods of Kirinyaga.

It would have gladdened the God of the universe that you now subscribe to if you had made a personal confession, too — especially about the so-called big men who used, dumped and persecuted you. But your trepidation can be understood. This, after all, is a country of mysterious disappearances, kidnaps, assassinations and murder, as you very well know.

Punching bag

When they want to get you, prayer helps although it’s more prudent to hijack the nearest matatu and gallop into exile.

Mercifully, though, we have, while you were away, established a truth and reconciliation commission. It’s my fervent prayer that you will spare a moment to appear before it and name, shame and forgive all those who persecuted you. As you so succinctly put it, you and the other Mungiki became a punching bag to the extent that when a man beat up his wife, cops heaped the blame on and your now born again followers.

No innocent soul should be allowed to suffer the pain and anguish that you and your followers have suffered. Never again.