Taken for a ride

Earlier this year the “Artur brothers”, foreign mercenaries brought into Kenya to create chaos, allegedly pulled out guns at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and threatened members of the public and members of the security services before speeding of in their cars. When witness at the commission set up to investigate the event differed on whether or not guns were pulled, the commission asked for tapes from the CCTV cameras, which were perfectly positioned to record the events. The commission was informed that apparently the cameras were not working that day.

Second example, John Githongo, the former Permanent Secretary in charge of Governance and Ethics who was forced to flee Kenya due to his investigations into corruption, meets with officials from the Kenya Anti Corruption Commission at the Kenyan embassy in London to present a dossier containing evidence of corruption by senior members of Kibaki’s government. To avoid confusion in the future about what was said and what wasn’t said during the meeting it is agreed that the anti corruption officials will take an audio recording of the proceedings and to that effect the anti corruption officials brought the necessary equipment to the meeting. Months later after Martha Karua, Minister for Justice, accused Githongo of, “not co-operating with the investigators” Githongo asked for the audio recordings to be made public only to be told by Aaron Ringera, the head of the Kenyan Anti Corruption Commission, that the recording equipment had failed.

Thirdly, on Sunday we learnt that somehow thugs managed to break into the heavily guarded Times Tower in Nairobi, managed to get to the 14th floor which is occupied by the section of the Kenya Revenue Authority which holds sensitive tax records and managed to steal a large number of computers with vital data, all this without any struggle and police even believe the perpetrators may have had keys to the building. The icing on the cake comes when the KRA informs us that most probably the stolen data was not backed up.

From these three examples we learn that the authorities can not record video, fail to record audio and do not back up vital computer records. Either that or someone somewhere is taking us for fools.

JKIA has applied for “Category One” status. This would enable airlines to fly direct to the United States from Kenya. The key component to getting Category One status is security. Now the Kenyan airport authorities want us to believe that during the biggest security breech EVER at a Kenyan airport the CCTV cameras were not working. Yeah right.

The Kenyan Anti Corruption Commission and the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee travel all the way to London with the sole purpose of interviewing Githongo to hear his evidence against the perpetrators of corruption in Kenya, someone of them senior political figures. Are we seriously meant to believe that on that day of all days, in that meeting of all meetings, that the audio equipment failed? And no one noticed it had failed on the day so they could record another session? They only “discovered” it had failed when they got back to Kenya? The equipment used by the KACC was same as used by the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee where it worked flawlessly. Did they not test the equipment? Did they not check to see if it had recorded on the day? It just failed? Yeah right.

And how can an organisation as through and determined as the KRA have the audacity to tell us that vital tax records that were held on computers which just happened to be stolen (from the 14th floor - no hit, grab and run mission this) just happened not to be backed up? The KRA wants us to believe that they have worse data management skills than any high school student in the world who all know you must keep at least two copies of vital documents? Yeah right!

Whatever you do, do not hire this government to record your wedding. You’d be lucky if they managed to capture anything at all.