Members of the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee (JLAC) of the National Assembly flew to Mombasa yesterday, just days after the National Assembly on April 12, extended the period for the approval or rejection of the committee’s report into the vetting of Bishop Oginde by 14 days.
The Nation has learnt that on two attempts, the committee sat within Parliament Buildings to approve its report on the vetting of Bishop Oginde, five of the eight members present voted to disapprove his nomination.
It remains not clear who is financing JLAC’s trip to Mombasa on a matter that can be comfortably settled in one of the many committee rooms within Parliament buildings.
It also remains unclear why the committee requires 14 days to approve a nominee who did not have many issues during his vetting.
Yesterday, Tharaka MP George Murugara, who chairs JLAC, confirmed that the committee is headed to Mombasa but remained reserved about whether Bishop Oginde’s matter will feature in its deliberations.
“I am not quite sure whether the matter will be part of the agenda. Remember we have 14 days to present the report to the House,” said Mr Murugara.
A section of the JLAC members, who did not want to go on record, said that they made the decision to reject Bishop Oginde over his involvement in land issues, among other reasons.
This is notwithstanding that no memorandum or sworn affidavits were filed in the House to challenge President Ruto’s nomination of Bishop Oginde.
The issues the members of JLAC are now raising against Bishop Oginde were not raised during his vetting on April 5, 2023.
The committee was required to table its report in the House either approving or rejecting the nomination of Bishop Oginde on or before April 12, 2023.
The MPs, moved by the law, were then required to consider and approve or reject the committee’s recommendations before the rise of the House on April 12, 2023, failure to which the President’s nominee would have stood approved for formal appointment by the President by way of a gazette notice.
This is in line with the Public Appointments (Parliamentary) Approval Act, which states that Parliament has 28 days to conduct approval hearings and make its determination on nominees vetted by MPs.
“If, after expiry of the period for consideration specified in Section 8, Parliament has neither approved nor rejected a nomination of a candidate, the candidate shall be deemed to have been approved,” reads Section 9 of the Act.
However, as the MPs sat on Wednesday afternoon for the tabling of the report, Mr Murugara moved a motion that was successfully approved by the House to extend the consideration period by a further 14 days.
“The House has this evening approved a motion moved by Chairperson Justice and Legal Affairs Committee to extend the consideration of the EACC Chairperson’s nominee by a period of 14 days. The committee will now submit its report within 14 days from today (Wednesday),” read a brief to the JLAC members.
Bishop Oginde, with a net worth of Sh170 million, was nominated by the President to the three-member EACC to replace Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, who has served a successful six-year non-renewable term. The EACC Act says that the chairperson and members of the EACC serve a non-renewable term of six years.
During his tenure, the retired Archbishop Wabukala led the commission in recovering billions of shillings looted from public coffers and public property that had been grabbed by individuals.
During Mr Oginde’s vetting, some JLAC members took issue with his past writings and utterances, some of which are likely to form fodder when the House will be debating the committee’s report.
Sometime back, Bishop Oginde, a columnist in one of the local dailies, wrote that Kenya risked sliding into civil war unless the Muslim community did something to stop the then numerous terror attacks in the country.
The committee members also faulted him for saying that “Kenya is a corrupt country” and gave the example of Rwanda that he said is zero tolerant to corruption.
The JLAC members, however, wondered why he wanted to be chairperson of EACC “because it appears that he has already resigned to fate in the war against corruption and may therefore do nothing.”
Dadaab MP Farah Maalim, a member of JLAC, specifically took Bishop Oginde to task over his previous newspaper articles on terror attacks in the country that he said put the Muslim community on the spot.
“You wrote that the Muslims have to do something about the terror attacks in the country, failure to which the country risks going into a religious war,” Mr Maalim said during the vetting.
However, Bishop Oginde defended his comments, saying that what it advanced was contrary to what Mr Maalim was saying.
“I told them to come out to unmask those with intolerance against the other communities. If I harboured religious intolerance I would not have risen to where I am now,” said the bishop.
When West Mugirango MP Stephen Mogaka reminded Bishop Oginde during his vetting that communal condemnation of illegal acts was wrong, the retired bishop said that the Dadaab MP was pushing “this matter to a place that will get us to the fears that I had then”.
“There was a perception that this is happening and the only thing that you could do is help us get out of the situation and help us address it,” the Bishop said.
Bishop Oginde had proposed to the committee to consider amending the law to provide for the timelines to hear and determine corruption cases and empower the commission with prosecutorial powers, among other proposals.
However, Mr Mogaka told him that the commission is sufficiently enhanced legally to undertake its constitutional mandate and that what is lacking is the wherewithal to implement the law by the commission.
“Your words that we are a corrupt nation are very disturbing and beg the question; why do you want the job then? Your own comments mean that you have failed in your role as a preacher doing his trade to change Kenya,” said Mr Mogaka.
