At a time Kenyans are mourning Albert Ojwang’, a philosophy that Harry S. Truman, the 33rd US President, popularised — the buck stops here– comes to mind.
Eliud Lagat, the deputy inspector-general of police, who is being accused over the killing of Ojwang’, a 31-year-old teacher, is under pressure to resign as investigations are carried out on the gruesome death.
In fact, the police IG Douglas Kanja, ahas confirmed his deputy made a formal complaint about a social media post attributed to the late Ojwang’, who was a blogger.
Again, Kanja, at a Senate probe, apologised that the National Police Service (NPS) misled the nation by claiming that Ojwang’ committed suicide by hitting his head on the walls of his cell at Nairobi’s Central Police Station hours after he was picked up from his home in Homa Bay.
While it has been the norm in Kenya to push bosses to resign when they are accused of mismanagement, in the advanced societies, communities and at well-run organisations and institutions, the ugly missteps see the top brass resigning without prompting or stepping aside until they are cleared.
Primarily, managers are in charge of planning, organising, staffing, directing and budgeting. But, away from such basics, managers are the thinkers who midwife their desks, institutions, organisations or countries, like the then US President Truman said, to greatness. When it’s hot or cold, the buck stops with ‘mkubwa,’ the Kiswahili word for ‘boss’.
Great managers also know when someone else is interfering with the flow of their work that causes turbulence. So, they either speak up or walk away from such jobs that cause constipation and ill-health.
The buck stops here! That’s the prism and yardstick Kenya, the State, and its institutions should aim at 62 years after attaining Independence.
Why should a dependable manager be forced to resign? Indeed, if Kanja, the police head, has apologised, he should lead the pack in the resignations of police officers who, in one way or another, contributed to the torture of Ojwang and silenced him for good when he only wrote what he should have been asked to explain with evidence.
Killing a suspect in a country with such a beautiful Constitution is the lowest of the low. It’s poor management.
If the teacher and blogger committed an offence as per the Computer Misuse and Cybercrime Act of 2018, he had to be arraigned.
Arrest and arraignment are the hallmarks of a well-run society. It is also good management that Jim Collins talks about in his book ‘Good to Great’. In fact, it is also the theme of the book ‘In Search of Excellence’ that Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr wrote in 1983 after a survey of American companies.
When Kenya promulgated its current Constitution in 2010, the philosophy of creating independent public service commissions was that such agencies would be run with finesse, not laissez faire.
If anything good or justice were to emerge from this shameful and painful death, it should be that Kenya deliberately choose the culture of putting independent institutions in the hands of qualified people, who build, not officers who easily ruin them.
Ojwang’s death will directly and indirectly hit Kenya’s economic climb when global independent progress auditors assign the country below-expectation marks. It is such reviews that investors and tourists use to make decisions that end up denying Kenya the much needed foreign exchange.
The buck stops with you, dear police bosses. Kenya is past the age of bosses who have to be prompted to resign when their organisations hurt the very people they should protect and give hope.
