By MICHAEL OYUGI
What Albert Ojwang’s death has shown the Gen Z generation like me is that stories of Nyayo House torture under former President Daniel Moi regimes have come back to haunt us.
The methods may have evolved from the crude torture chambers of the Nyayo House era, but the outcomes remain disturbingly similar and evoke bad memories from stories we heard from our grandfathers.
The death of the high school teacher under police custody in suspicious manner because of a post against Deputy Inspector General of police Eliud Lagat has hit us hard as a young generation.
The police claimed he hit his head severally on the cell walls causing his death, similar stories we heard from Nyayo House torture chambers.
While IPOA has promised further investigations on the matter, the death and others will never settle public rage and need for reforms.
This predictable cycle of police torture, deaths and forced disappearance have equated our police force to be in the same level as robbers, terrorists and ruffians with dark alleys being safer than a police cell.
Kenya police cells, like Nyayo House torture chambers in the past have become modern day slaughterhouses where suspects routinely perish under mysterious circumstances.
As I wrote earlier, and I repeat, the methods may have evolved from the crude torture chambers of the Nyayo House era, but the outcomes remain disturbingly similar.
Because like in the past we still have special police units and shadowy officers not attached to any police stations roaming the country and killing Kenyans.
The government’s response to such deaths has become ironical as the head blames the tail with nobody owning up just like stories our fathers told us of Nyayo House torture.
There will be solemn statements about “thorough investigations,” perhaps a junior officer suspended for show.
But real accountability? That would require admitting our policing system is fundamentally broken.
We have forgotten the Pangani Six executions? The reinstated officers? The forgotten promises of reform after Baby Samantha’s murder? Among others.
Ojwang’s case cuts deeper because it exposes how custodial violence is enshrined in police and government bureaucracy with a simple arrest warrant carrying a death or torture sentence as police become the arresting officer, prosecutor, judge and executioner rolled in one.
We’ve perfected the machinery of extrajudicial killings to those who should keep our safety and stepping aside of senior police officers will only pacify Kenyans.
What we need is concrete action: immediate release of all custody footage from Ojwang’s detention; an independent autopsy with international observers; a public timeline for prosecutions; and most crucially, a parliamentary reckoning with custodial torture as a national crisis not assumptions with empty promises.
The bitter irony? Albert Ojwang’ dedicated his life to education and activism – two pillars meant to strengthen our democracy.
That his death exemplifies everything wrong with our policing system should shame us all. Until we treat custodial deaths as the national emergency they are,
Ojwang’s name will simply join the long, grim roll call of those who entered police custody alive and left in body bags.
