Court of Appeal judge Akilano Molade Akiwumi, who has died at 97, led the charge in calling out police and security agents for being blatantly partisan and doing dirty jobs for politicians in government.
Since the return of multiparty politics in the early ’90s, the country experienced bloody inter-tribal conflicts after every election, leading to mass displacements, injuries, deaths and looting of properties.
Former president Daniel Moi appointed a three-member judicial commission of enquiry on July 1, 1998, to investigate the cause of the clashes and name the persons of interest.
The commission had another appellate judge Samuel Bosire as his deputy and judge Sarah Ondeyo as a member.
His final report minced no words in placing blame and naming scores of senior politicians and top security and provincial administration bosses as culpable.
“Not until we learn to live peacefully together as Kenyans, will we have a better and brighter future,” he said at the first sitting of the commission.
The commission's term was extended several times up to July 31, 1999. It handed in its report on August 19, 1999.
Akiwumi said in the report that politicians had repurposed the state apparatus, including the security services, to divide the people into tribal enclaves. He said they leveraged on the differences among the cultural communities to drive animosity.
“It is the duty of each one of us to stop this emerging tendency that will undermine the stability and unity of our country,” he said.
“It is our duty to investigate and identify the causes of these tribal clashes and to propose lasting solutions for tribal harmony that transcends tribal differences,” he said.
The family of the retired judge announced his death on February 15 this year, saying his wife and children will dearly miss him.
The Akiwumi report said it was not for lack of equipment or personnel that key security agents failed to take action to pre-empt and respond to ethnic attacks during charged political times.
It said key Kanu politicians, including ministers and MPs, had so much control over police and provincial administration that they used them for their personal political agendas and vendettas rather than for security and rule of law.
The police had been turned into a ragtag gang commanded by politicians to do their dirty work.
“In our view, it is not the lack of adequate security personnel or equipment that contributed to the tribal clashes. The police force and provincial administration were well aware of the impending tribal clashes and, if anything, connived at it,” the commission said.
“As Francis Gichuki [a senior police boss at the time] honestly put it when asked why he allowed senior Kanu politicians to pressurise him in the discharge his duties, into taking certain courses of action, ‘My lords, it is a political government. We have to be cautious, this is a political government,’” the report read.
The commission had found that police watched idly by as vigilantes from communities friendly to the government attacked and killed members of a community considered politically hostile.
Major flash points were in parts of Nakuru county, Narok, and other parts of Rift Valley and Coast region.
Akiwami served as judge of the High Court from 1987 to 1993 and thereafter as a judge of the Court of Appeal from 1993 to 2001 before retiring.
He later served as a judge and President of the Comesa (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) Court of Justice from 2000-2003. He served on Botswana’s Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Martha Koome eulogised him as a patriot who tirelessly served the country as a distinguished jurist.
"He was known for enriching our legal framework and also significantly contributed to its development," the CJ said.