The tragic shooting of Mr Mugabe Were, ODM’s Embakasi MP, puts into sharp focus the real motive behind the recent reshuffle of top officers in the Kenya Police. It’s too early to conclude if the killing was political assassination or the politician was a mere victim of the breakdown of security in the country. Whatever the case, the killing is bound to evoke deep anger and be a source of great concern within the ODM ranks and all Kenyans of their right mind.
Some may argue the killing was not political since Mr Were was little known and he posed no threat in the dangerous power games being played out with our lives by the illegitimate President Mwai Kibaki and the People’s President, Raila Odinga. But criminologists will tell you that a cleaver person would not go for Mr Odinga because the consequences would be too tragic to image or comprehend.
In the current state of affairs, any politician with a killer’s mind would target Mr Odinga’s foot soldier to send shivers down the spines of the ODM leader and his vocal MPs.
Contrary to the repeated assurance by the Commissioner of Police, Maj Gen Mohamed Hussein Ali, last week’s abrupt changes in the Kenya Police, when the country was already on fire triggered by the theft of the presidency, was not an ordinary administrative reshuffle of officers.
Fresh details gathered from the corridors of power by Kumekucha indicate the reshuffle targeted the removal from the Force of the soft-spoken Director of Operations for the Kenya Police, Mr David Kimaiyo, because he was being regarded as an ODM mole in the heart of Kenya’s security.
The reshuffle was carried out in a very clever way to make it look like it was an administration reshuffle affecting several senior officers. It has emerged that Mr Kimaiyo was the prime target of the reshuffle but Kibaki’s ruling elite had to make cover up changes to avoid raising eyebrows in the ODM ranks.
The changes – announced by Maj Gen Ali – were the work of Kibaki’s men and not entirely the Commissioner, as he wants Kenyans to believe. Mr Kimaiyo was kicked out of the Kenya Police and posted to the Ministry of National Heritage as an Under Secretary, where his police skills are likely to rot for the rest of his life, because he was being perceived as an ODM mole in the Kenya Police.
Kumekucha has established that Mr Kimaiyo’s fate in the Kenya Police was sealed by the National Security Intelligence Service (NSIS) over his alleged links with ODM’s William Ruto – who is being fingered as the prime culprit in the mass killings of Kikuyus in the vast Rift Valley Province by his own Kalenjin community.
According to confidential and reliable sources, Mr Kimaiyo and Maj Gen Ali had been put on a 24-hour surveillance by the NSIS for being suspected to have links with the ODM. They were accused of leaking sensitive state secrets to the ODM in the ran-up to the General Election in the event that Kibaki lost the presidency.
Maj Gen Ali, having served in the Military Intelligence Corps in his Army career, was wiser than Mr Kimaiyo. He played his political infidelity safely, although the NSIS had him nailed by bagging his phones. He was reported to have been so furious when he discovered NSIS had been listening to some of his telephone lines he had regarded to be safe.
But the police chief quickly stopped his clandestine activities with the Odinga camp when he sensed that the Kibaki elite were determined to hang onto power under what circumstances. But the poor Kimaiyo was so convinced by the ODM wave that Mr Odinga would win and he threw caution out of the window. He stood a good chance of being the police commissioner if Mr Odinga’s presidency was not stolen.
It has emerged that the NSIS closely monitored every move Mr Kimaiyo made. The NSIS are reported to have established that Mr Kimaiyo was leaking state secrets to Mr Ruto, through former GSU Commander and Presidential Escort Commander (under former President Moi), Mr Samson Cheramboss. This gave the ODM an edge over the Government since they were always ahead of every plot and trick being hatched by Kibaki’s inner circle.
But Mr Kimaiyo failed to read the signs on the wall to make him make an early retreat like Maj Gen Ali. He was convinced Mr Odinga would be president and he would take over from Maj Gen Ali. As fate turned out, Mr Kibaki stole the election and he was back to State House illegally. It’s being said that Mr woes in the Kenya Police came back to haunt him when the NSIS betrayed him by presenting a dossier on his clandestine activities with the ODM to Mr Kibaki.
Maj Gen Ali and Brig Michael Gichangi, the NSIS chief, are still serving military officers. Maj Gen Ali is senior than Brig Gichangi and they are reported to be in good terms. It’s being said Brig Gichangi opted to save his military colleague as they sacrificed Mr Kimaiyo. But Maj Gen Ali is not off the hook yet.
Kibaki’s inner circle knows that the Commissioner, too, had clandestine dealings with Mr Odinga. But the prevailing national tragedy has turned out to be a blessing for Maj Gen Ali and he is likely to keep his seat a little bit longer.
The removal of Mr Kimaiyo from the Force was good news to Maj Gen Ali since he posed the most serious threat to his police career, which he desperately want to cling to due to the power that goes with that office. Maj Gen Ali and President Kibaki have one thing in common – unquenched greed for power.
When Kibaki became Kenya’s third president, Mr Kimaiyo was the Commander of the paramilitary General Service Unit. Soon after Mr Kibaki was sworn in, Mr Kimaiyo was removed from the command of GSU and posted to Police Headquarters. He was later forced out and posted to the same ministry he was pushed to last week. His crime then? He was regarded as being close to Mr Moi and he was also a Kalenjin!
Moi and the Kalenjin were then being regarded like raw sewage by the solid Narc wave that swept Kibaki to power. Nobody wanted to associate with them due to Moi’s mis-rule for 24 years. No one sympathized with Mr Kimaiyo or his tribe then. Months after Mr Kimaiyo left the Force, the country started experiencing a high wave of crime and the top police chiefs who were then in office appeared to have ran out of ideas.
By then, Kibaki’s popularity had started to wane due to the unmasking of the Ango Leasing scandal and pressure from Mr Raila Odinga and his LDP over his failure to honour a pre-election power-sharing deal in the famous MOU. Kibaki’s men were forced to eat a humble pie and they brought back Mr Kimaiyo to the Kenya Police and appointed him the Director of Operations, the most powerful post within the force.
The office of the Director of Operations is the pillar of the Kenya Police. The Commissioner is a mere figurehead comparing him with the Director of Operations. All provincial police chiefs and formation commanders report directly to the Director of Operations. He collects and collates national crime and security data from all those senior police chiefs and then presents it to the Commissioner.
The Commissioner relies on the word of the Director of Operations in laying strategies on the every day running of the Force. The Director of Operations takes full charge of all security operations in the country.
The success or failure of such operations largely depend on the plans put in place by the Director of Operations. On the crime front, Mr Kimaiyo performed very well. He’s the man behind the achievements Maj Gen Ali keeps boasting about. Tribalism aside, Mr Kimaiyo was the best police commissioner Kenya is unlikely to have (at least under the Kibaki regime).
As the Director of Operations and formerly being in the GSU and in State House as the Presidential Escort Commander, Mr Kimaiyo knows the Kenya Police and Kenya’s security system like the back of his hand.
He knows almost ever secret of President Kibaki, the First Family and Kibaki’s ruling elite. Mr Cheramboss, ODM’s unofficial chief security advisor, also took charge of the GSU and Presidential Escort . These two men are not the ordinary product of the Kenya Police College in Kiganjo. They received specialized commando training in Israel and in the US.
With Mr Kimaiyo out of the way, Kibaki’s ruling class believe they have a firm grip of the Kenya Police and they believe state secrets will remain under lock and key. Kibaki’s homeboys in the Kenya Police have taken key positions.
This move is a dangerous for Kenya since Kibaki’s men – within the security agencies and in the kitchen Cabinet – can easily execute an assassination or any other thoughtless crime against political rivals which can plunge this country into an all out civil war.
Perhaps, Mr Kimaiyo was edged out of the heart of Kenya’s security machinery to pave way for Mr Were’s type of executions. God forbid if that is the thinking of those who want to rule by the gun.
