Of chopper accidents and incompetence of public servants

Soon after the announcement of the helicopter crash that killed Emurua Dikiir MP Johanna Ng'eno and six others, the personal assistant to John Mbadi, the treasury cabinet secretary, Orsbone Yogo, on Facebook, gave a scary experience that they went with his boss while travelling on the same helicopter.

This jogged both my memory and causal theories around public tragedies and the conversations that have followed, including conspiracies.

In the 90s, I attended a funeral of a victim of police killings in Uthiru.

David Muthuo had responded to a scream from a neighbor who had been attacked by robbers. Because of the frequency of robberies without police intervention, the villagers had resolved to defend themselves, hence the resolve by Muthuo to run to the scene of the crime despite the reigning darkness in the forested village at night. He was allegedly mistaken for a thief and shot dead by police who had decided to keep watch that day.

During the funeral, every speaker attributed his death to God. "Mungu mwenye nguvu amemchukua na atamuweka mahali pema peponi" (God has taken him and kept him in heaven). When I got a chance to speak, I took a completely different angle in the post-death debate.
"Are you people saying that God cocked the gun and shot Muthuo? No. God is innocent. The murderer of this boy was the police officer. Why would God kill an innocent, unmarried young man? A good person who cared about the safety of his neighbor?"

There were murmurs from the "holy born-agains" who thought I should not have dragged God's name into the discussion. I walked off the stage and let the majority have their way.

That is how religious individuals react to tragedies, including the death of the innocent. However, other disciplines and sources of knowledge have non-religious explanations. Science and philosophy hold the view that every action has a cause. In Africa, too, one may, with a mixture of seriousness and humor, say that all death is the craftsmanship of an enemy within.

By implication, to eradicate such happenings, our eyes have to focus on the fertile soil that does the groundwork for the dreaded outcomes. Against this background, is it possible for the public torch to capture causal factors that explain Hon Ng'eno's helicopter crash?

The government insider leakage could be where to start. Mr Yogo, Mbadi's PA, on his Facebook account, rushed to discredit the helicopter Ng'eno used. He argued that he once used the same helicopter with his boss. The helicopter performed badly and almost saved Ng'eno by crashing them first. They were so frightened that they did not talk during the flight. After emerging from the killer flying gadget, they thanked God for being alive and remained wary of the prospective machine.

And so one may ask, in whose charge are these helicopters, and why didn't some authority write off that plane much earlier to avert future accidents? A person of a CS's stature would have been expected to initiate an intervention mechanism, which he apparently didn't. Those in power and responsibility should know that by acts of omission or commission, they are saving people's lives or causing their deaths. The sector responsible for the choppers may have killed Ng'eno, going by Mbadi's PA's revelations - a faulty machine not withdrawn from circulation is an error by the authorities who manage them.

While Yogo's theory may not be conclusive, it brings to attention the reality of the many tragedies that happen courtesy of incompetence by public servants. Many die in hospitals, on roads, etc because of incompetent officers.

Soon after the National Alliance Rainbow Coalition took power, a former colleague prisoner at Kamiti Maximum Security prison approached me with an interesting inquiry: "We were in prison in Kamiti the same time, though you were in block E. I am a robber and, for now, in charge of our armoury, where we keep our tools. We have a total of 9 guns. Four pistols and five rifles. Our armoury is in Mathare North". He said.

The fellow told me that he wanted to quit the game and had been advised that I would help him surrender safely. Dangerous as this guy was, I had to do something. After all, I knew many cabinet ministers at that time.

I called the Minister for Trade, Mukhisa Kituyi, and narrated the story. He told me that his docket was full.
"I can't deal with that".
I went to Justice Minister Kiraitu Murungi, a man I had worked with in the Safina party and a fellow human rights crusader during the second liberation struggle. He could see me. I thought. However, what manifested was that he did not give me a chance to speak to him.

I went to the president's office to see an assistant minister, Stephen Tarus, in the internal security ministry. I queued the whole day without seeing or meeting him. Finally, my client vanished when he realized that things were not working.

Now think about this.

When those guns are used to kill other people, why shouldn't these people take responsibility for subsequent murders? I am simply putting across a case that the helicopter engineer who may have failed to write off the plane that Killed Ng'eno as I draw attention of citizens and people in public office to how they often commit murder by by through the sin of omission- incompetence or malicious dereliction of duty.

In this context, the opportunistic revelation by Mbadi's PA holds them to account, however peripheral that may appear. It is opportunistic because the story may be meant to divert attention from other viable theories that may point to government quarters as suspects in the tragedy.

My argument will not be complete without providing an illustration of how good performance by a competent public servant has forestalled death. Such officers are many, I am quite certain.

Way back in 2017, I fore-ran Raila Odinga's last rally in Tononoka, Mombasa. I was being driven by my cousin. One of the tires on our car had a crack, and so I instructed the driver to keep within 100km/hour. He instead kept speeding beyond that limit till we got a tire burst and rolled three times.

Before Hon John Michuki reformed the transport system begining 2003, I never applied seat belts in vehicles, including personal ones. When this accident happened in 2017, I had accepted the culture of belting up whenever I was travelling. Despite rolling three times, we survived without injuries.

My driver and I are alive today because we had belted when we rolled three times. I am alive because Michuki was an effective, no-nonsense, thorough Minister for Transport. Despite his homeguard history during the colonial period, his efficiency as Minister saved my life.

Anyone can tell what Michuki would have done if he was still running the transport docket in our times. The helicopters that have been dropping from the skies killing Kenyans would not be in operation. All of them and the officials managing them would have been axed. The one that killed Ng'eno would not have been in the yard - and would have saved the six lives we lost.

Incompetence by its very nature is a threat in every respect, and that includes physical safety to a country's citizens. I am inclined to think that the helicopter crash in which six people lost their lives may have had something to do with incompetent officers in the transport sector.

Truth be told, incompetence concerns stretch beyond our borders, especially when we delve into the quality and sources of the helicopters. Reportedly, the majority of the machines that litter our airspace belong to an age that is thirty to forty years gone by.

A gubernatorial aspirant in my county has had one of these second-hand gadgets until something went wrong. It was repossessed. The games we play with vehicles from Dubai, which we gladly refer to as x-Japan, have found their way into the delicate business of aviation, which is more risky to human life. A second-hand vehicle from Dubai will serve and stall on the Road. A scrap chopper from Europe's dust bin will stall in the air and begin to drop down into a crash, killing all on board. Appropriate rules and regulations are required for the safety of our national airspace.

If we had a people-welfare-centered government, I believe Ng'eno and his team would still be with us. Let the principled Ng'eno take leave, but we as a nation have some homework to do.