The question of who killed Ouko is one of the most enduring mysteries in Kenya’s history. It has almost become like consensus the narrative that Ouko’s death resulted from an implied Executive Order. Most important question is “Motive”. If you suspend for a minute all you think about what happened and read the detailed analysis at URL provided at the bottom. It is a very detailed analysis and it does touch on almost all the nearly 10 motive scenarios. Read the report from top to bottom and seek clarification elsewhere on the web.
Did things really go the way it’s been reported for over 25 years?
Several motives presented are: Ouko is a brilliant politician and that Westerners are rooting for him to become president and everything else funnels out of that. In other words a serious political threat to Moi. There is the Washington Trip, The apparent sacking of Ouko and withdrawal of his security guards, and banishment to Koru home and ultimately his death. First point is that Ouko was never fired and still acted within his Ministerial responsibilities at Koru before his death and indeed his trip to Gambia was on course to happen but of course he never saw 14th Feb plus he specifically called Anguka’s wife his Personal Assistant on 12th indicating he would be back at his office on 13th Feb. . Ouko’s security was never withdrawn and he is the one he is the one who gave his bodyguard and driver time off to resume on 13Feb the day he died.
The Washigton Trip: There is the tale of Ouko meeting privately with Bush to the exclusion 0f Moi which infuriated Biwott so much he sarcastically calling Ouko Mr. President which had it happened would immediately become a death warrant.The detailed Bush Diary which recorded all activities and meetings Bush held was released in 2003 and there is no such a thing on the Diary, and some US Intel guys acknowledged the finding. So if there was no meeting between Ouko and Bush what were Ouko and Biwott feuding about that his lifespan was reduced to one week more in this world? Ouko did give a press conference in the US in his capacity as Minister of Foreign affairs and there were no fusses about it. That particular narrative was fanned by Barrack and another fella who were not on the trip, and the attendees did not report any squabbles between Biwott and Ouko …matter 0f fact Biwott and Ouko were transported together, lived on the same floor in the hotel, and all their observed communication was professional and courteous. Ouko’s journal in fact suggested a very successful trip , and that specifically the standings of President Moi got elevated dramatically during the trip and he was glad. Additionally it was at right around this time correspondence had taken place for Biwott to seucure Ouko’s son an Energy Ministry slot as his graduated approached…so I would seriously doubt if Biwott would be approached for such a request if that extremely high level of disdain for Ouko … …
Actually for Moi I believe he is generally a good guy …of course there will be low jabs here and there in politics as a necessity…I suspect that during his rule most of the disappearances were ordered by those in his private bubble on the premise that they were being
proactive to gain more attention from Moi…so after the evil unfortunately the dirty work of cover up must be done and this is about when the hit men come into the picture if bribery proves ineffective…and those squads they very likely have this “gentleman’s agreement”…in which those teams do what needs to be done and don’t directly brief him for plausible deniability if things go wrong…that is the darkest side of politics…
A careful distinction is needed between implied executive orders and the necessary cover up that usually follows…In other words chances are that the acts committed are in his interest…and the truth is not…or rather the president didn’t actually order the act in most cases his bubble did and of course this is the point at which Biwott automatically comes into play…or at least the masses think that…though that’s not always the case…and in the URL provided you will likely find information you were not expecting and the attendant implications that are begotten…
With Ouko’s murder the key question is the motive. The most important one is the apparent political threat Ouko presented. Now people forget that Ouko was not the only person in the clouds that caused Moi sleepless nights. There were others as well keeping in mind this was the dawn of multiparty politcs. None of those other key figures like Jaramogi Matiba Kibaki et al none of whom were assassinated. Now Matiba had it really rough at Nyayo House but he walked out alive. So there would have to be compelling reason to take him out and for the ones in Ouko’ case two were prominent: Washington Trip and the Molases plant fiasco.
The Kisumu Molasses Plant: This tale is almost exclusively attributed to Marianne- Briner-Mattern and Airaghi. The very important first fact is that Troon never read the Molasses File that detailed the whole project but rather based his analysis on the premise that Marianne and Airaghy sounded like genuine and honest folks!! A closer look will reveal their BAK group was a phony company, that Airaghi was a fugitive wanted in Milan for conman charges when Ouko died. They were gambling on swindling the Kenyan Government at great profit and their first bet was to run with Ouko who was the Minister for Industry and had given Ouko a boost in the 1988 elections. Minimum work was done by BAK at the Molasses Plant as their true goal was to get as much funding as they could get. Unfortunately for them Ouko was transferred to Ministry of Foreign Affairs docket and Dalmas Otieno was given the Ministry of Industry, and is the one who singled out the BAK as fraudsters and they were shut down. Keep in mind the Molasses Project did NOT deal with the Ministry of Energy with Biwott at the helm and that is one of the key points that fells the Molasses theory. Marianne was in fact trying to blackmail Ouko because 50 employees at the Molasses plant were redirected to assist in Ouko’s campaign and the high pressure on Ouko is because of lost money and time that they had invested in Ouko with no benefits in the long run. If anyone was going to be pinned on the Molasses Plant it would be Dalmas Otieno, coz he is the one who chucked the BAK group out of the Molasses fiasco and in fact Airaghi got deported at his behest. The Molasses project was effectively killed by the end of 1988 and didn’t resurface until a company belonging to the Odinga revivede the effort in the 2000s. It was suggested that Biwott , Saitoti, and others wanted kickbacks for the project and had their weight behind their 'preferred" company unsuccessfully and Biwott had a grudge with Ouko for that,…when upon closer inspection the person they should have targeted Dalmas Otieno if anything . It turns out there wasn’t really any competition between companies for the tender because all the companies that did the bidding were all subsidiaries of the same company …s0 how do you bribe against yourself? So the Molasses narrative has proven itself to be garbage in the context of Ouko’s murder.
While acknowledging there was a lot of tension because of a row in the Ouko family but Troon didn’t come close to investigating that trail. In fact the single person who was the greatest danger to Ouko was none other than his brother Barrack who became estranged with Ouko around 86f till Ouko died. Barrack was something like a Deputy Commissioner and didn’t like a transfer he was given to the Attorney General’s office since his eyes were on the PC slot and apparently he asked Ouko to assist his cause but he didn’t assist because Ouko himself had eyes on the PC Spot. Weird stuff. Barrack even campaigned in the 88 election for Ouko’s opponent and Ouko edged out Joab Omino by less than 2000 votes as MP.
Barrack is in fact perhaps the quin tessential embodiment of fantastic stories on the murder: The Washingto n Trip fall out saga yet he wasn’t even on the trip. He also claims Ouko wrote names of people who came to take him and passed it to Selina Were to give him Barrack of ALL the people who totally despised Ouko instead of say the wife. Its an absurd proposition because the guys who came for Ouko likely did’t give him a chance to compose much or decided to call authorities. Ouko somehow was tricked into getting out and realizing what was transpiring tried to flee and that’s probably when his Ankle suffered a serious injury.
Jonah Anguka It is speculated that Jonah Anguka was the patsy or fall guy for the murder.He was believed widely and even authored the book “Absolute Power” around 98. Anguka’s wife Susan was Ouko’s personal assistance and it is conceivable he had the notion Ouko slept with her but no concrete proof. Anguka injected himself into the investigation at almost all key points early on and was even at the murder sight in under 2 hours after Ouko’s discovery/. In his book he portrays the image of a hapless victim of state persectution and some of it might even be true. But very significantly Anguka seemed to be around during all relevant times, while being out of reach of being considered a suspect. He indicated the mutual brotherly affection but more likely than not it was just a ruse. When Ouko was found an officer had come to break the bad news to Mrs. Ouko and had pulled to the side when Anguka stormed in and straight to her face with callousness that her husband’s body had been found and she fainted. Being a DC of Nakuru why was he virtually every where key discoveries were being made??
Keep in mind Ouko had several affairs some of which might have left in their wake serious venom.There is no solid evidence of any of them saving for a mistress who bore Ouko’s child and he confessed about it to her.
Take a swipe at the whole of this document and see if everything that was preached as gospel is indeed consistent with actual temporal events .
The conclusion will be for you to make on who you think most probably did it…
Yenyewe Anguka needs ti say more. But I dont think he was the only prime mover, this was a conflomerate of different powerful people who all wanted him dead, Anguka became their nfantry guy
@Marty McFly Barrack Mbajah is a blood brother to the late Robert Ouko. They had a very serious fall out about 1986, when Barrack as a Deputy DC or the like, with the ambition to advancing to PC level, got moved to the Attorney General’s office instead, and to which he was vehemently opposed, and as such he consulted with his brother Ouko, then Minister for Industry(before moving to Foreign Affairs in 1988), for assistance to stop the transfer but he concluded that Ouko himself was eyeing the PC promotion and thus failed to help the brother, and thereafter they only remained brothers by “biologigal happenstance”.
This fall out was very serious and strained the family for he convinced their other brother Collins to join the feud and their collective anger was directed towards Ouko and strangely, for trying to restore civility, the mom! In fact it is said that Collins ones looked at his mother with no appearance of joking whatsoever(And Ouko’s as well as Barrack’s as the three were brothers)…and told the Mum not to come anywhere near his place to visit or that he would cut the mother to pieces!..
In the meantime I’m pretty sure as anyone who was old enough at the time Ouko’s death everybody was focused on Blaming Moi and Biwott, yet the greatest danger was not even close, but Ouko’s own brother Barrack and according to various narratives he was involved in the planning and /or execution…and even if not directly I am sure his footprint is right there in the middle of all the blood spilt.
Of course Barrack Mbajah is the guy who contributed a big portion to the “Blame Moi and Biwott” story by inventing the story about a “Row between Ouko and Biwott during the Washington Trip” right before Ouko’s death. Turns out it was all none sense. There was no private meeting between Bush and Ouko while Moi was locked out that “annoyed” Biwott so deeply that he called Ouko “Mr. President” and paid the price by ending up dead a week after their return from the trip. It was all nonesense.
Additionally Barrack invented yet another lie; That Ouko, when his abductors came to grab him from his Koru home, made a list of those who came to pick him up and slipped a note to
Selina the maid to give to Barrack!
Barrack despised Ouko beyond anything else in this world and why would Ouko leave such a note for Barrack, when higher likelihood is that Barrack himself was probably in the group that came to capture then kill Ouko if anything, just to enjoy seeing the life snuffed out of him and Barrack safistied look as one of the last things Ouko would get to see…It also suggests that Selina was somehow awake and therefore theoretically witnessed the abduction much more clearly. Of course in her testimony she indicates that she was startled by a noise and then when she walked out she saw a white car exiting the compound. Of course Selina saw more than she said she saw but was perhaps warned to keep her mouth shut, and seeing what Ouko, a whole cabinet minister, dispatched like a homeless dog on the streets, of course knew clearly what would happen if she said all that she new.
I can go and summarize for you the reason why the country remained tunnel visioned pointing the blame at Biwott:
Molasses Fiasco-That Biwott wansted some kind of kickbacks and Ouko’s work was to expose it yadi yada. Here Troon relied on Marianne-Briner Mattern and Domenico Airaghi’s evidence without due diligence to check them out first. Troon failed to read the Molasses File that detailed the whole project before writing his report. Of course later it emerged Domenico Airaghi was literallly a fugitive conman wanted in Milan, Marianne a slut and a pathological liar who slept with anything moving to move up, and their company BAK a phony chimera or what you might turn as a whiff of not fresh air.
The Washington Row:
The lie detailed above by Barrack.
and,
Rebuttal of the fact Ouko was the biggest political threat to Moi. A quick check will reveal there were certainly more poliched politicians than Ouko with candidates such as Jaramogi Odinga, Mwai Kibaki, and Kenneth Matiba et al and two of those had been VP before even! but all 3 got to the First Multiparty Elections held for Kenya in 1992 alive.
@Koolibah It’s a breath of fresh air to find someone commenting substantially I must admit. Here is my take on the Ouko thing. I do believe that Washington Trip that happened between about 27th Jan to Feb 4, a week before Ouko’s demise really skewed the trajectory of the investigations and fuelled predominantly by the: Molasses Fiasco, Washington Trip Row, and a Mistaken assessment that Ouko was the top p0litical threat to the Moi regime; which can not be the case in the presense of Jaramogi Odinga, Mwai Kibaki, and Kenneth Matiba for starters.
I do believe local poilitics restricted to Nyanza and closer to Ouko’s life were the triggers of significance. Jonah Anguka becomes a very big star here with the wife having been Ouko’s Personal assistant, and honestly with his love for women, almost guaranteed there was at the minimum the perception of impropriety here.
There is then Barrack Mbajah’s Feuding with Ouko and even campaigning against him, and because of their official associations…before long you find people like Oyugi etc sliding into the picture. I think Oyugi was a faithless opportunist who would pounce on any course of action that would be beneficial to him and with Internal Security at his disposal this was very effective.
Ultimately the man Barrack Mbajah or Anguka got with other known political opponents of Ouko, and leveraging muscle power such as Oyugi did faithlessly, he was an automatic invite.
After the killing took place the political innuendo kicked in high gear as we love political conspiracy and always point to the top.
Granted wiping out Ouko was probably in Moi’s best interest though he probably had nothing to do with it, and politically the clean up process by force is for the government indeed they cleant up, using a team to wipe out rough edges, and a second team to clean out the first team to leave a clean slate. All the drama that unfolds in the interim played right to the benefit of the incumbent as the truth was never revealed,while political competition was toned down. The very last point was ex post facto a benefit not the driving force to begin with.
If you have read my entry both on the Ouko Factfiles, and Jonah Anguka , plus a colllection from a URL that well analyzed the whole plot a holistic picture arrives…that is an end product not a single person envisioned. The ultimate destiny though was a mysterious limbo to the Ouko case…the best outcome for the incumbent.
Actually that is one of the best uses of space I have seen. Your question is an excellent one. The short answer on Oyugi is that he was a victim of the phase 2 of wipe out, or rather he was in phase 1 cleaning out some elements and of course depending on specifics he becomes baggage himself and accordingly gets liquidated. You will notice that around Ouko’s death one thing is immediately clear; almost all the individuals implicated are almost entirely from right there in Nyanza.
Quite honestly if you think closely people like Moi and Biwott had no specific intentions of wiping out Ouko, but it’s the lies from the Molasses, The Washington Trip, that by inference, a mistaken attribution of Ouko as a very big political threat…there is simply no meaningful evidence to that effect if you think closely. The government, after such things occur, plays cards circumstantially, so it was in their interest to run the clean up they did, with hiccups and so forth, but that governmental clean up is a necessary evil rather than an automatic after-effect of a government driven initial execution by the government itself…in this case Wiping out Ouko…when people saw a government driven clean up it was automatically assumed the execution was by the government itself which is not necessarily the case, and I seriously doubt it was the case this time round. It was an operation that was a function closer to Ouko’s home turf…which invited the governmental effort that followed…
Oyugi might have been removed for any number of reasons but his position at the helm of Internal Security is certain to win him enemies, and as well as nurture ambitions that others in the power structure might frown upon, making it apt that he is used to do as much clean up himself before being cleaned up to ensure…tying up loose ends if so to speak…lest he use his faithlessness to imperil somebody very shrewd who was a couple more boxes at an advantage on the chess board .
Ouko’s death…the very direct causes…in my mind 1. Jonah Anguka or 2. Barrack Mbajah…Oyugi really confused things because of his high rank for if you search there is absolutely no motive for Oyugi to wipe out Ouko…unless we accept one of the previous fallacies that would be one of 3: Molasses, Washington, and Ouko as Number 1 threat. Then based on accepting one or more of those propositions then Moi/Biwott or whatever simply recruits a very reliable executioner in the form of Oyugi. There is no meaningful evidence of such a thing though.