Attorney General has been misused and should resign

The scuttlebutt on the Kenyan street is that Attorney General Githu Muigai is the proverbial dead man walking. They say the erudite AG is sitting on a lonely ledge in the inner sanctum of power. Mr Muigai is well-titled. Among his many accolades are Professor and Doctor of Laws. Those aren’t meagre achievements. You don’t climb to the top of both the academy and the legal profession by accident. Or luck. Not even patronage can get you there. You do it the old-fashioned way — you earn it. That’s why it boggles the mind why a man who’s toiled in the vineyards would allow himself to be slighted, abused, and humiliated by lesser souls in broad daylight. Methinks I know.

Prof Muigai is a good lawyer and a decent scholar. Those are high honours because I am judging him against a global standard. But what really makes him tick? I’ve noticed he’s lately taken to wearing funny hats and dark glasses. Ala Muamar Gaddafi. That’s not a good sign. I hope he’s only covering his eyes to camouflage feelings. Great or ambitious men are motivated by very few things — money, property, knowledge, a great family, power, sex, fame, and public service. They are ego-driven. You will never be great unless you have an ego. But ego isn’t the same thing as hubris. The latter is always poisonous while the former can often act as a kick in the butt.

By all accounts, Prof Muigai isn’t a poor man. But he left a lucrative legal practice to become AG for a reason. He was hungry for the job. Very. Some of us tried to talk him out of it because President Mwai Kibaki had nominated him outside the consultative spirit of the 2010 Constitution and the Coalition Government. His candidature was poisoned when Mr Kibaki lumped it together with those of Judge Alnasir Visram for CJ and lawyer Kioko Kilukumi for DPP. Mr Kibaki didn’t have the power to pick a CJ who hadn’t been forwarded to him by the JSC. In the ensuing public melee and ugly spectacle, Mr Kilukumi withdrew, but Prof Muigai stuck to his guns.

Judge Visram fell by the wayside before the JSC while Dr Willy Mutunga wowed the nation and was approved as the sole candidate for CJ. President Kibaki was hog-tied and had no choice but to nominate Dr Mutunga for CJ. Prof Muigai was ready to be dragged through the mud — if that’s what it took — to become AG. Unlike Mr Kilukumi, he resisted all pressure from civil society and the political class to stand down. That was the first clue that Prof Muigai wanted — perhaps needed — to be AG badly. But it’s his performance as AG that’s left many of us shaking our heads. Like a mule, Prof Muigai appears tone deaf to criticism of his inexplicable tenure.

Nothing signaled Prof Muigai’s slavishness to Kikuyu political princes than his zealotry on the ICC cases, especially that of TNA’s Uhuru Kenyatta. Prof Muigai seemed to take the case personally and conflated his role as the chief government lawyer with being a private attorney for Mr Kenyatta. It seemed personal the way he battled ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. He dragged Kenya into the ICC cases as though the country was on trial at The Hague. He used taxpayer money and resources to defend the personal cases of the indictees at The Hague. To this day, Kenyans don’t know how much of their tax shillings have been squandered on the ICC cases of Mr Kenyatta and URP’s William Ruto.

It’s Prof Muigai’s relegation to the margins of the Jubilee regime — in spite of his slavish service — that begs the question. You’d think such a subservient AG would sit in the bosom of power. Instead, Prof Muigai appears to have no clue about key government decisions. On several occasions, he has disavowed Bills before the National Assembly. He has poignantly criticised Bills originating from the AG’s Office. Even more bizarre, he seems to be AWOL [absent without leave] when Mr Kenyatta openly defies court orders — like the ruling to pay teachers their mutually negotiated pay raise. Either Prof Muigai must be in a deep funk, or he simply doesn’t give a hoot. Or he craves being AG — even neutered.

I can’t bear to watch my learned brother being so humiliated. That’s why I am asking him to resign. Either he’s giving legal advice that’s ignored. Or he’s not being asked to give any advice at all. Perhaps he’s giving incompetent, or bad advice — what he believes the boss wants to hear. In either case, Prof Muigai needs to pack it in — and bid the AG’s Office adieu. Sayonara. He can’t be such a glutton for punishment — a masochist.