By JOE OMBUOR
Bernard Hinga ought not to have been Kenya’s first black Commissioner of Police at independence if merit were the determining factor, argues a former officer who served the force during the Kenyatta era.
Solomon Nguthi Mulang’a, 70, who was forced to resign from the force by Hinga, says Michael Arrum was number three in the police hierarchy after Commissioner Sir Richard Catling at independence.
"President Kenyatta had his reasons for settling on Hinga, then a junior intelligence officer, to take over from Catling, but merit was definitely not one of the reasons," says Mulang’a, who was a police constable then.
At 24 years of age, Mulang’a who hails from Matinyani in Kitui County, was appointed the bodyguard to Kenya’s first Vice-President, Jaramogi Odinga, in 1963, only to run out of favour with Commissioner Hinga two years later for refusing to falsely incriminate his boss on treasonable charges.
Milton Obote
"The Vice-President had met Ugandan President Milton Obote at Rock Hotel in Jinja for discussion. I heard it was something to do with the Kenya/Uganda Railway. As a bodyguard, I could not have been privy to the details.
"On our return to Nairobi, I was summoned by Hinga to his Vigilance House office. He wanted to know what I had heard Odinga say to Obote about the Kenya Government. He had information that he (Odinga) had plans to overthrow the Government with Obote’s assistance.
"Confused and perplexed, I told Hinga that my sole duty was to ensure the Vice-President came to no harm and that I was not party to his discussion with President Obote.
"To which he angrily retorted: ‘"Do you want your job?"
Summary dismissal
"I answered in the affirmative and he informed me that he was giving me 48 hours to give him a complete report of what transpired between Odinga and President Obote in Jinja, failure to which I should be prepared to resign from the force or else face summary dismissal.
"When I maintained that I had nothing else to say, Hinga gave me an additional one day to decide my fate. I opted to resign. But he was not through with me yet. He ordered me to go back home to Kitui and never to set foot in Nairobi or any other urban centre for five years, "if I was still interested in my life".
"I doubt if Jaramogi knew what was happening to me. I had no money and friends helped raise fare to relocate my family to the village. I had a wife and a four-year-old son.
Mulang’a says the abrupt loss of his job and the stern order to confine himself to his Kitui birthplace impoverished him.
"I did odd jobs such as tending farms for neighbours for a few coins to survive. I was ridiculed by people who knew my status.
When he returned to Nairobi after his five-year ban, Mulang’a had completely lost touch with Jaramogi, who had since been detained by the Kenyatta regime.
He landed a job with the security firm G4S, rising to the rank of supervisor before he retired in 1994.
"It was this job that enabled me to educate my son through secondary school and college," he says.
"I forgave Hinga for the suffering he subjected me to, but I am appealing to the Government to compensate me for the inconvenience and my lost time."
Now a small scale farmer at his Matinyani home near Kitui town, Mulang’a’s dream is that one day he would meet Jaramogi’s son, Raila, who was a teenager at the time he was in service to explain to him how he refused to betray his father.
He says the new Constitution is the best thing ever to happen to Kenya because senior civil servants will never be appointed based on tribalism and nepotism again.
His wife, Penina Kabutha, recalls how they lived as beggars during the five years her husband was confined to the village.
"People ridiculed us. My brothers would empathise with me and give me money to buy clothes because we wore tatters."
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