In my mind, I urged the media, the whistleblowers, the courageous MPs to pursue the thing until we had everyone involved where we could see and shoot them. Stealing bread out of the mouths of the poor and the starving is murder in the name of commerce, deserving of the most condign punishment yet writ in our law.

So I waited for all the information on the matter to trickle in, and the Rogue's Gallery to assemble.

The wait wasn't to be long, for statements, implications, accusations, facts, figures, lists, letters, notes, memoranda, insinuations, and rumour flowed thick and fast. In the torrent of information I was, I thought, able to discern the gist of it.

1. Despite the harrowing famine raging in the country, the ministry of agriculture and, specifically, the National Cereals and Produce Board, colluded with unscrupulous traders to divert and steal maize from government stores and sell it to millers, or, worse still, smuggle it to the Sudan.

2. The scam had occasioned a loss of at least 200,000 bags of maize at NCPB.

3. The scam was undertaken with the outright collusion or condonement of persons at Cabinet level.

4. As a result, although there had been maize, the government would not be able to intervene and relieve starving citizens.

Briefly, these seemed to be the elements of the most recent entry in our national Register of Atrocities By Kenyans Upon Kenyans. So I psyched myself up to do a mega-rant about how those we trust to keep us safe from the most painful of deprivations turn on us and themselves kill us. I was going to talk about why no sane person should repose the slightest faith in government, particularly that of the African Republic of Kenya. I was going to lament how we pay people handsomely to kill us when common robbers might be cheaper. I was going to suggest that it is better to be a citizen of a failed state and have no one to rely on, and therefore no one to blame, than to be a citizen failed by the state. I was going to say that the Grand Coalition Government has brought us nothing but grief since its conception and must be declared a National Disaster.

I was so mad that I couldn't sit still at my computer to peck out my discontent. I would have done it on Monday; the muse fled my thunderous mind. I was similarly paralysed on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I watched the entire drama in Parliament. I saw the debate, the histrionics, the most ridiculous melodrama since Zangalewa. Yet I know that that is how our state is governed, how we are led, and how we legislate, defend our sovereignty and generally act for the just government of the people. In the parliamentary playground/nursery, truth is often wrapped in a tisue of lies; rumour is the ore from which truth is winnowed. I was patient.

Bonny Khalwale, the pugnacious member for Ikolomani held the floor for quite a while. He spoke eloquently, embellishing his submissions with colourful language and gestures. He liberally deployed what my communications professor called semantic markers. He used his words to paint a grim picture of nefarious ministers and associates heartlessly starving the poor. He fueled my fury once more.

Somewhere along the way, I came to. Here was Mr. Khalwale, talking of companies irregularly allocated maize. Here was he, with a list, down from 3000 companies to 600. Here was he, mentioning people both in and out of government. Here was he, going on about undeserving recipients of maize.

The gap in relevance was suspicious. You see, Mr. Khalwale sits on the Public Accounts Committee, a watchdog mandated with the prevention of pilferage of public funds. Accordingly, he had sensationally reported that the stolen 200,000 bags of maize were valued at Kshs. 600,000,000, a huge loss; and a matter that falls in his remit. But now Khalwale was going on about the ownership of companies ‘allocated' maize, and thus responsible for the famine in the country.

 Before I could get round the mass of words, points of order and whatnot, there was Khalwale, now on a new mission, concerning an insurance company, Indians and gunnybags. Totally at sea, I repaired to my desk for a spot of thinking. My train of thought went as follows.

The outcry over the maize scandal resulted from allegations of corruption in allocating maize meant for relief, by which the government had suffered massive losses and had been rendered unable to feed its people. Therefore, in Parliament, I expected Mr. Khalwale to demonstrate that the Minister for Agriculture, by dint of selfish, corrupt, devious and perverse actions, had enabled phantom millers and other unwashed types to steal maize from NCPB. That, really, was all this scandal was about.

However, after weeks of hue and cry, names mentioned and fingers pointed, he seemed to have casually abandoned the initial quest and embarked on an egregious fishing expedition. Our valiant warrior's quest for truth and accountability had quickly lost its initial target and began to wear the suspicious visage of a trenchant fixation on the person of the minister for agriculture. He has surrendered the enquiry into loss of maize and public funds and gone into ‘deserving and undeserving' traders. He had blithely discarded the enquiry into a theft, for histrionics concerning the identities of shareholders in small businesses. He appeared to have forgotten that there were hungry, angry people out there who really wanted to know if the minister for agriculture was starving Kenyans, and wanted, in stead to entertain the country with salacious stories of girlfriends and relatives and so forth. Thus were born serious doubts in my head, and I began to ask questions, and to remember information I had ignored for the scandal and sensation. And what I have learnt does not make me very proud of myself, of Mr. Khalwale, of the media and of our Parliamentary system. For I learnt the following.

Powers of the Board.

Functions of the Board. Cap. 318. 4.(1) The functions of the Board shall be -

(a) to regulate or to control the collection, movement, storage, sale, purchase, transportation, marketing, processing, distribution, importation, exportation, disposal and supply of maize, wheat and scheduled agricultural produce;

(b) to buy, store, sell, import, export or otherwise acquire and dispose of maize, wheat and scheduled agricultural produce in such manner, such quantities and on such terms as it may, from time to time, deem necessary to fulfill the requirements of producers and consumers in Kenya;

(c) to advise the Minister on the proper production of maize, wheat and scheduled agricultural produce in relation to the needs of Kenya, and the extent to which control over the exportation and importation of maize, wheat or scheduled agricultural produce is desirable or necessary;

(d) to do any other act which is connected or incidental to the foregoing.

(2) In fulfilling its functions, the Board shall comply with any general or special directions which the Minister may give.

(3) Nothing in this Act shall prevent or prejudice the appointment of the Board as an agent under section 14 of the Agriculture Act.

I also learnt that at any given time, the NCPB has a stock of maize under relief, SGR and commercial categories. SGR stands for the Strategic Grain Reserve. I learnt that anyone is free to buy maize from NCPB as long as he pays for it.

Therefore once the the minister for agriculture reported that every bag of maize was paid for, Mr. Khalwale ought to have told us if there was another issue to it, because he never once alleged that relief maize was being sold. Since his issue was the disappearance of 200,000 bags of maize, he ought to have shown that the minister was lying to the country, and not gone into who owns what. As it turns out, all sorts of entities have been dealing in maize with NCPB, including some well known to the first family.

But my learning was not over.

Mr Khalwale's crusade against the minister for agriculture in light of this information began to look like an ad hominem assault wholly unrelated to the plight now most unkindly punishing Kenyans.

 And that is a tragedy indeed. Because starving people have been incited to hold the most vindictive view of a probably innocent person; because, despite the sensation, there might be no maize scandal of the nature Mr. Khalwale made out; because, in the meantime, reputations have been dented irreparably without prospect of redress, and embarrassment, agony and distress occasioned on well-meaning people; because the Press have been led to a scent, and await the spilling of blood, relying on further disclosures by Mr Khalwale to make a kill; because a fragile country's chronic wound is being poked with the red hot skewer of vendetta and calumny; because the chairman of an important watchdog committee of parliament does not possess the prudence to discern a hatchet job for implacable partisans from a genuine matter of public interest; because Kenyans sided with Mr Khalwale on grounds that they saw no possible reason for him to be lying, and that trust has been defiled. And because we have not been ready for the truth for many reasons: boring, politically inconvenient, materially unrewarding, not sufficiently sensational, etc. And, finally, because, despite all appearances, we expected more from parliament.

 So, Mr Khalwale, it is time to set aside childish things and get to the point: After all the time you've spent, all the questions you have asked and the ministerial statements you have made, all the documents you have read and all the words you have spoken, were 200,000 bags of maize lost from NCPB? Did the NCPB lose even a cent in all the transactions involving sale of maize? Were Ruto, Raila, Namwamba, Kutuny and others involved in a conspiracy to steal maize from NCPB? Did the cabinet subcommittee on food security sleep on its job to allow the conspiracy? How is the minister for agriculture responsible for the famine in the country?

 Because, once you have set aside childish things, you will realize that the only possible outcomes in the sport you got yourself into are two: you go down, or he goes down. Where we stand, we frankly do not care what happens to either of you.

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