On March 16, the Sunday Nation woke the nation with the catchy headline; “Raila: I saved Ruto from military coup.”
The headline was informed by an “exclusive interview” the former Prime Minister Raila Odinga had granted veteran journalist and Weekly Review writer Macharia Gaitho, at his Karen home.
In the story, Raila had compared the events of Gen Z protests of last year to the revolution in Egypt which ended in a military take-over. He claimed by unleashing the military to the streets to quell the riots, President Ruto was unwittingly handing over power to the military.
“Ruto can be removed through the ballot, but once soldiers get out of the barracks, they never go back,” Raila was quoted in the story as saying.
The story also claimed that an unnamed friend of Raila’s “got wind of such a plan and called him, asking to urgently intervene.”
The newspaper had barely rested in the newsstands when social media was flooded with condemnation of the Nation Media Group by people who felt the media house had misreported the matter.
Initially, uninformed and clueless critics- including some from Raila’s ODM party- thought that Sunday Nation had misinterpreted Raila’s remarks at a funeral held the previous day.
“The headline in today’s Sunday Nation is a total misrepresentation of facts. Nowhere in his speech at the funeral of Col. Gitahi did Raila say anything related to what you have splashed. This is irresponsible journalism,” a senior ODM official wrote on X platform, before the post disappeared.
The matter later ballooned when the Ministry of Defense issued an official statement terming the reportage “inaccurate” and the claims “false, baseless, unfounded, misleading and reckless.”
“The publication of the articles by the Nation Media Group, based on unverified claims from undisclosed source, is not only irresponsible and unpatriotic but also a clear example of sensational reporting aimed at increasing readership rather than upholding journalistic integrity,” the unsigned statement from Ulinzi House read.
So, was the report inaccurate, false, baseless, misleading, reckless, sensational, or irresponsible as was claimed?
The first thing to note is that the source of the story, the subject matter of the interview, did not complain or had not complained as at the time of writing this piece.
Secondly, Raila has previously spoken about his palpable fear of a military takeover in the guise of quelling the riots. Indeed, he has always used this as the justification into why he rushed to the rescue of President Ruto.
Third, the newest element, and which the Ministry of Defence seemed to have taken serious issue with, was the claim from the unnamed friend of Raila who “got wind of such a plan” and nudged him to offset it by working with Ruto.
Fourth, this was a one-on-one interview, and was probably the first sit-down interview since Raila formally signed a political deal with the President. He was therefore speaking from his own point of view, on what triggered him to work with the President.
Fifth, Raila is himself no stranger in Jerusalem when it comes to coups. By his own admission, he was involved in the planning of the 1982 aborted coup against Kenya’s second President Daniel Arap Moi. He was subsequently detained without trial for many years.
He may not be an authority on coups, but by virtue of his experience, but also as a statesman, he knows a thing or two about coups. Besides, he gave an elaborate explanation in the story about the nature of the coup he was talking about.
“I was the last international leader to be hosted by Mubarak. Protests were already underway, and he assured me that he had things under control. Two weeks later he was deposed,” he explained, adding all the details of the debacle that ensued with Muslim Brotherhood, and eventually the military coming in to restore order in Egypt.
In this context, and taking into consideration the points raised here, the story as well as the headline was- by and large- neither baseless, unfounded, inaccurate, misleading nor false.
However, there is the small matter of the “plan” which Sunday Nation cannot shake off. This is the matter of the claim that a friend of Raila got wind of the “plan” and alerted him into tipping the scales for Ruto.
It would have been very important for Gaitho to push Raila on this, partly because this is a very serious claim, but also because it would have established whether Raila was merely evading the question on his actual reasons for closing ranks with Ruto.
The way the “plan” was introduced left every reasonable reader to conclude that this was not an Egypt-like kind of a coup which flowed out of necessity and circumstances. By using the term “plan”, Raila implied a deliberate occasioning of a coup but riding on the protests, something which deserved more prodding.
Was the President tricked into authorising military intervention? Who came up with the idea in the first place? Was this “plan” ever reported to the Commander-in-Chief, and are there any active investigations ongoing? This would have been good follow-up questions to either Raila or the government.
To the extent that there was no effort to further pursue this line in the interview, Sunday Nation was reckless to include such a loaded claim in the story. But the blame is equally shared by the subject of the interview, Raila, who also refused to name the person who told him about the alleged plan.
Finally, it is instructive to note neither the ministry statement nor the flood of criticism in social media complained about Raila and his utterances. Would that have been the case had he not closed ranks with the President?
