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Politician’s mysterious disappearance

Details

Published on Tuesday, 30 December 2008 19:10

He was an ambitious young man whose dream to represent his people in the 10th Parliament never came to light. Nearly a year after his dream of representing Bobasi in Parliament was nipped in the bud, Kepher Mainama Ogega, 28, may not have another chance to contest for the highly priced seat.

He has not been seen for the past three months and relatives are fearing for the worst.

Kephar Ogega

The Minister, who contested against Ogega, has written to the Commissioner of Police, Maj- Gen Hussein Ali asking him to help unravel the mystery. It all began on September 20, when Ogega was picked from his house by uniformed police officers for his alleged connection to an undisclosed crime. Since then, nothing has been heard of the father of four.

"We have searched in hospitals, mortuaries, ditches and rivers without a trace," says his nephew, Geoffrey Ogega, one of the last relatives to see him alive.

Obure, in his letter to the Police Commissioner notes that Ogega was booked under OB No 64/21/09/008 and he had been questioned for allegedly harbouring criminals in his house.

"It was on a Saturday at about 8pm when members of a dreaded local vigilante descended on my uncle’s residence. About 50 people surrounded the compound," Geoffrey, who was in the house together with his wife and two children recalls.

They however failed to gain entry. In the meantime, Ogega enquired from area chief whether he had sent anyone to his compound, to which he denied. 

A nephew of Kephar Ogega shows the window panes that members of Sungu Sungu broke when they raided his home.

He also called a police officer who advised him to comply with the demands of the police officers present."The squad knocked the gate, surrounded the house and smashed window panes. We hesitated to open the door fearing they were thugs," Geoffrey narrated.

Shortly after, police drove in. "We obliged and opened the door after recognising the Land Rover from Kisii Police Station," he said. "They demanded that he produces a criminal he was harbouring and a gun. They searched the house but recovered nothing," Geoffrey recalled.

The officers questioned him on his education background and asked him to produce his certificates. He complied after which they arrested him.

"It was around 11pm when they left for Kisii Police Station," he said. "The following day, we went to the station. We talked with him, gave him food and left him there at about 5.30 pm on Sunday," he added.

"On Monday morning, we went to the station but were shocked when the officers told us he had been released at 5 pm the previous day," he says. Geoffrey says Ogega’s cell phone went dead and has never been reached since then.

What followed has remained a nightmare to the family. They searched for him at the rural home in Gucha District but he was not there."How was he released from police custody at such a time on a Sunday?" wonders his nephew.

Ogega, a graduate of the University of Nairobi, worked at the provincial administration in Nairobi before joining Coca Cola’s Kisii Bottlers as a sales manager. He then ventured into exporting soapstone artefacts and invested in the transport and real estate sectors.

Two years earlier police had raided his house citing similar grounds and destroyed property. He reported the matter at the Kisumu Provincial Police office, where he was locked up for two days.Family members deny he was in criminal activities saying his predicaments could be associated with a land dispute of 15 years.

Ogega unsuccessfully contested the Bobasi parliamentary seat on a Workers Congress Party of Kenya ticket during last year’s general election. The family wonders whether he could have died at the police station or whether he was cornered and killed by the Sungu Sungu gang and his body thrown away.

"Why was he not charged if he had committed a crime? Why did the police confiscate his academic certificates?" wonders Ogega. Acting Divisional Criminal Investigations Officer (DCIO), Jacob Muchai says people who have been linked to crime fear going back to their communities even after being released from police custody or prisons.

"Several people are hiding, fearing they will be lynched if they went home and there is enough evidence to this," he said. He however denied knowledge of any formal complaint about Ogega as a lost person. "It is not the duty of the police to know where people released from custody go. We don’t follow them up," he explained.

The family does not think he is hiding from Sungu Sungu because he would have called them. The DCIO also denied the existence of such a terror group. Cases of people being picked from their homes only to go missing for good are on the rise in Kisii.