Police explanation of Ojwang's death comes from a familiar past script

Deputy Inspector General Kenya Police Service Eliud Lagat, The Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja and Ahmed Issack Hassan chairperson of the board of the Independent Policing Oversight Authority briefing the press following Albert Omondi Ojwang's death in police custody at Central Police station, Nairobi. June 9, 2025. [Jonah Onyango, Standard]

Although common sense is expected of people holding positions of responsibility, not all of them exhibit that human quality. Rulers repeatedly do things that reveal a desire to insult the public and thereby cause it to lose trust.

At first, the insulted public gives the officials the benefit of the doubt, wondering whether the said officials are blind, insensitive to the cries of the ruled, or simply fundamentally foolish.

Second, having been insulted to the point of losing tolerance, the public decides to act and begins mounting gestures of defiance that could become ‘revolutionary’.

Third, due to their unbecoming behaviour, those in authority systematically lose legitimacy and the right to hold office or govern. That legitimacy is then transferred to a new centre that appears to be in tune with public aspirations.

The transfer of legitimacy from one centre to another is not sudden; it is the incremental result of prolonged public anguish and despair that cuts across social classes, generations, and geographical regions. By then, those holding office become irrelevant in the minds of the governed.

Kenyan officialdom, when engaging in acts that defy common sense, has often found itself perceived as illegitimate. The police assertion that Juja MP George Koimbori abducted, tortured himself, and then dumped his unconscious body in a farm in Githunguri was mind-spinning.

In addition, claims surrounding Albert Ojwang’s death in a police cell defied common sense and raised doubts about the legitimacy of those in power. It is not the first time officials have given ridiculous explanations following suspicious deaths.

In the 1950s, as the Mau Mau War was winding down, prison officials beat detainees to death in Hola and then lied that they had died after drinking bad water. They were not believed. The massacre accelerated independence.

Strange deaths in postcolonial times led to many conspiracy theories. The assassinations of Pio Gama Pinto in Nairobi and Malcolm X in New York in February 1965, argued American comedian Dick Gregory, were not coincidental. Another theory claimed that Pinto’s assassination was an accident—his killers had misunderstood their instructions to scare him and ended up killing him instead.

In July 1969, Tom Mboya’s assassination in Nairobi generated other theories, including claims of power shifts in Washington. Richard Nixon, reportedly keen on cultivating his own preferred African leaders, had just become president. Mboya, a close ally of the Kennedy family, was not a Nixon favourite.

Then there was the 1975 killing of JM Kariuki. Government officials initially claimed he was in Zambia, only for his tortured body to be found in Ngong Forest, soaked in acid. The social uprising that followed caused Jomo Kenyatta’s government to lose face.

The police explanation of Ojwang’s death—that he committed suicide by hitting his head against a cell wall—sounds familiar to those who remember the 1990s. Labour Minister Peter Okondo once ominously warned ACK Bishop Alexander Muge of Eldoret that he would not return from Busia alive. Muge died in a road accident on his return and reportedly murmured, “It is done.”

There was also Foreign Minister Robert Ouko, who had accompanied a large presidential delegation to Washington for a breakfast prayer meeting in January 1990. After returning, Ouko travelled to Kisumu to rest, only to be found dead near Got Alila, a small hill. Police claimed that Ouko had killed himself and soaked his body in acid.

In a different case, Father Anthony Kaiser was reported to have stopped on the Nakuru highway, shot himself in the back with a shotgun, and then walked to collapse in a roadside ditch.

In making such ridiculous statements about deaths, officials show they lack common sense and appear to believe Kenyans are fools. In treating Kenyans as collective idiots, officials provoke public wrath and make grave mistakes that can lead to loss of legitimacy or even revolution.

Police statements about Ojwang’s death, given this historical pattern, only serve to undermine government legitimacy.