By Anyang’ Nyong’o
I do not have a Facebook address. But some individuals have persistently created addresses for me and went ahead to communicate with people while impersonating me in a completely criminal and fraudulent fashion.
The more I have tried to close these addresses the more they have been opened by these unscrupulous individuals. They have a devious political agenda.
The purpose of writing this piece today is to achieve two objectives. One is to let the public know that this column is the only information highway I have been using in the written media to discuss issues and communicate my ideas. Secondly, cyber crime such as those being used against me can be used against any other public figure.
Hence it is in the interest of the public that I make this issue public. I do not have a Facebook address of my own as of now, period. Cyber crime is carried out by moral cowards and political midgets who cannot stand up in public and express their ideas with the conviction they deserve. They do not merchandise their criminal goods simply by impersonation.
Very often they create fictitious e-mail and Facebook addresses using pseudonyms to defame and slander others. This is not done for fun: very often it has political objectives. As the so-called NHIF scandal was running its course, a couple of these criminals decided to engage in a most vicious conversation in the Internet essentially to bad mouth and slander me.
As far as they were concerned I was guilty of heinous fraud even before any investigation had been done. One by the name Stephen Njoroge had the temerity to write in his blog called the Kenyan Daily Post on March 24 that Minister Anyang’ Nyong’o had been caught with his hand in the NHIF till transferring Sh900 million to an account in Jersey Island! The next communication, of course, from an equally vicious fellow, had me now transferring the same amount of money to my account in Cayman Island.
The naked truth is that I have no such account and I have never defrauded the NHIF of even a cent. Apparently these moral cowards who, of course, are probably using fake names in these correspondence, got their story from a lead story in the Star newspaper. In one of its banner headlines, this otherwise respected daily claimed the NHIF had wired Sh900 million from its account in the Co-operative Bank to some off shore island account. In trying to piece together the various sums of money that were apparently wired on several occasions the arithmetic did not just add up.
Although the NHIF issued a clarification the next day saying the story was false and in bad taste, the newspaper did not even care to apologise.
The story is told of a journalist who went to interview the Minister for Agriculture in one African country where some donors had accused the minister of diverting 1,000 tons of fertilisers for use in his own farm. The minister denied the accusation and decided to give facts and figures showing the donor was wrong.
First, said the minister, he had a farm of cattle and did not grow any crops anywhere. He even found it more economical to buy the Napier grass he needed to feed his cows rather than grow some himself. Moreover, if one took into account the number of farmers who had received a ton of fertilisers each, there was no way 1,000 tons could have been left over for the minister to take. Secondly, the Minister tried to clarify.
At that point in time the journalist interrupted the minister and said he did not need any more facts. He had already made up his mind how he was going to report the story to his readers and he did not want to be confused by facts.
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