Ongoro Skirted the Truth in Critiquing Wafule Buke
By ndolo asasa Esq
Ongoro Wa’ Munga, the acclaimed author of ‘Sunrise at Midnight’ in a response to the altercation between Wafula Buke and Miguna-Miguna intentionally misrepresented issues to favour a Miguna outlook.
While acknowledging the presence of lots of language in the said article – he termed it a rebuttal, information was not in equal measure, less facts.
I wish to put a few of this in proper perspective;
1. Wafula Buke is the Personal Assistant of Hon. William Samoei arap Ruto and he has never attempted to keep it secret from anybody who cares to know.
2. To the best of my knowledge Buke has NEVER been jailed in Kenya, Uganda or anywhere else. In Kenya, he was detained in exclusion at Kamiti Maximum Prison after a judicial mistrial in the late 80’s. In Uganda he was held in a police station, NOT JAILED, for a short period as the only means of keeping away from being kidnapped and or being killed by the Kenyan security forces and embarrassing the host nation – Ongoro can check the facts with Ugandan Authorities if he cares.
It is important to note that being held by security forces was and still is a standard practice when dealing with persons on the run from an outside country especially where the involved persons do not have the appropriate paperwork and or /not social high fliers.
3. Buke was NEVER in Tanzania! Again check with the Tanzanian government if you care.
4. The UNHCR issue is also a creation of Mr. Ongoro as Mr. Buke has never, to the best of my knowledge of him, which by the way is good compared to many people, applied to UNHCR for refugee status. Once more, check with UNHCR as the records must be available somewhere.
On the flipside, assuming that Buke had actually applied to be a refugee, why would UNHCR find it more plausible to grant the refugee status to a person of lesser stature in the eyes of the student leadership and the dictatorial government and deny the more senior factor person? After all Miguna-Miguna was just the Treasurer to Buke and even after the initial arrest, the government found it best to acquit him of being a threat to the nation- again this is documented, or is it not Mr. Ongoro?
5. In the Buke article, I beg to be guided by Ongoro where Buke imputes his tribulations to Miguna-Miguna!
6. There is a Swahili saying, “Kufa kufaana”. It is this that Ongoro refers to as Miguna’s ‘amazing political intuition’. The intuition that made him escape incarceration by KANU, the intuition that made him ‘work hard’ in Canada while Buke wasted himself away in detention at Kamiti, in the non prospective Uganda and in the nascent political struggles on the ground! The same intuition that kept Miguna-Miguna in Canada from 1992 to 2008, when, he by the same intuition landed the obviously lucrative and envious position of Special Advisor to the Premier!
7. And yes, talking about envy, why should Buke and any person for that matter not be envious of Miguna? Considering that there are those who worked as hard and many who worked harder and sacrificed more than Miguna-Miguna in efforts to liberate our good country but only ended up dead, maimed, permanently labeled misfits, currently considered irrelevant dinosaurs seeking attention and or even faceless and jobless.
In conclusion, I find it difficult to accept it but I guess I will have to live with it that makers of history are more often than not too busy to write the history. As Alex Haley would say, ‘…it is the killers of our heroes and heroines that write history’
ndolo asasa Esq
ndoloasasa@gmail.com
