“The (Daily) Nation had run with a similar story only the same week,” one respondent wrote.

“Does anyone have any proof that [Nicholas] Biwott was at all involved in Ouko’s murder? Did you consider The Nation a tabloid for publishing that?” another one asked.

And my reply to them was that The Nation was not the one “moaning about a (government) vendetta, so let’s keep it out of this until its time comes.”

That time is now.

I’m dying to hear how Alphayo Otieno, a conman residing in Nairobi, was able to fool editors of The Nation – the flagship of Kenyan journalism – to think he was writing stories from the United States.

On Nov. 4, the day Americans went to the polls to elect their 44th president – and a day it looked certain that Barack Obama would be that president – I received a Google Alert that my name had appeared somewhere on the Internet. Such alerts often come from stories I have written, but this one was different. It came from The Nation, a newspaper I have never written for.

Alphayo Otieno claims to have taken this picture in Hawai'i for a fabrication he wrote for The Nation. The story is a plagiarism of an article by David Maraniss of the Washington Post. See link at end of posting.

I followed a link to a story in The Nation’s Web site titled “Only a few had faith in Obama in the early days” (by Alphayo Otieno) to see how my name had been associated to such a story.

“Obama ni wetu! Obama ni wetu! (Obama is ours) shouted Kenyan fans at the San Diego’s Petco Park, stomping their feet and blowing horns, dancing and waving their national flag,” the story began.

I was at Petco Park that day for the USA Sevens Rugby tournament on Feb. 11, 2007 – the day after Obama announced his entry in the race to the White House. After the Americans thwarted Kenya’s efforts to win a trophy in the competition, only Obama’s candidacy and his connection to their homeland could console Kenyans.

I was at Petco Park that Sunday morning and those rhythmic words Alphayo Otieno claimed to have crafted are my words. They come from “Obama-mania Comes to Kenya”, an article I wrote for The San Francisco Chronicle soon after I returned from San Diego.

Otieno shameless plagiarism did not end in the first sentence of the article he submitted to The Nation. In fact, Otieno lifted the first 10 paragraphs out of my work, almost word for word. He also took words I had written and attributed them to other people.

For example, the quotes Otieno credits to Valerie Okoth and Michael Agwanda – his fictitious sources – appear verbatim in my article. Later in the story, Otieno deceives readers by implying that he actually spoke to me.

My further investigations revealed that this was not an isolated case of Otieno fabricating stories. On the day after the U.S. elections, Alphayo Otieno submitted another story, which The Nation published under the headline: “Win Brings Pride to Kenyan Diaspora.”

No one in America can read that story and not wonder how in one day Alphayo Otieno swiftly zooms through Minnesota, Tennessee, Texas, Detroit, Houston (which is in Texas, by the way), New York and Los Angeles to find that “virtually all Kenyans joined in the celebrations as they flew Kenyan flags on their cars, with majority adorning branded T-shirts and caps.”

Otieno claims to have talked to Kenyans like “Elizabeth Akinyi, a hair dresser in Kansas” and “Eliud Thuo, a resident of Maryland.” While such names might be hard to verify, those of “post-graduate student and staff at the University of Missouri, Millie Kavoki” or Dr. Dan Kuria at the University of Nebraska, or “Agai Yier, a student in Columbia” are easy for even a 10-year-old with Internet access to fact check.

Every major university in the U.S. assigns everyone affiliated with the institution with either an e-mail address or a phone number, or both. That information is kept in a database and made accessible to anyone.

What is more despicable than a scumbag like Alphayo Otieno’s lack of ethics is that editors at The Nation were negligent. The did not take such a simple step to “protect the integrity of our journalism,” as Nation Media Group, the paper’s parent company, proclaims on its Web site.

When I finally alerted The Nation about Otieno’s fraudulent articles, New Editor Njeri Rugene – who I must commend for acting promptly to pull the filth Otieno had submitted – had this to say:

“I am actually ashamed to admit to you that the fellow conned some editor here. I am even more ashamed to let you know that our investigations so far reveal that the fellow wrote the so-called stories from Nairobi.”

Rugene added that the editor, whose name she did not reveal, “did not ask for [Otieno’s] telephone contact but they just communicated through email.”

She said the editor might have trusted Otieno “because he had seen a few opinion pieces bearing this man’s byline published in our pages.” Rugene also said that the opinion editor “had sensed something fishy and stopped using [Otieno’s] articles.” That left me wondering why the opinion editor did not inform other editors and the editorial staff.

This sort of negligence is inexcusable. In fact, I would go a step farther and say that this carelessness is unforgivable considering that many of The Nation’s stories are reprinted in publications like Allafrica.com and other media across the cyber universe.

Rugene says The Nation’s top editors have launched an investigation to see how this despicable assault on the reader’s trust was allowed to happen. During that investigation some questions must be answered.

How did Otieno’s relationship with The Nation begin? How did he get paid, considering that he “lived” in America? Is the paper going to sue him for fraud in order to get him to return whatever money he was paid? Nation Media Group says that “Such cases will be investigated and those who are found to have flouted our ethical principles will be dealt with firmly.” Doesn’t this negligence amount to flouting ethics? What disciplinary action will be taken against the editors whose negligence facilitated Otieno’s deception?
Nation Media Group pleads with the public to “bring to the attention of the management any cases where our reporters, photographers and editors may have violated our established ethical principles.”

Here is one case and a chance for The Nation to defend “the truth” as the newspaper’s motto declares.