City Hall: Same forest, different monkeys
Opinion
By
Mutahi Mureithi
| Feb 22, 2026
When I was a cub reporter years ago, my editor dispatched me to City Hall to investigate reports that Nairobians were consuming untreated water from dubious sources.
The story was that instead of chlorine, the fellows were ‘treating’ water using plain old chalk dust, of course supplied by cartels looting City Hall, dry.
I trudged to City Hall, introduced myself as a reporter for the leading newspaper and demanded to see the Mayor, at the time a clown named John King’ori, a man deficient of many traits and characteristics that define men of integrity, accentuated by his lack of basic understanding of the Queen’s language.
But those were the days, where such characteristics were the pre-requisites to holding high office.
It is around this time that the mayoral gold chain somehow disappeared never to be found. But I digress.
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I asked to be shown the Mayor’s office but instead, I was taken into a gloomy room that had a foul smell from one corner where old files and broken chairs seemed to have found their final resting place.
Never one to worry, I thought perhaps this was the Mayor’s reception for those fellows not in the ‘very important’ category.
I sat on a rickety chair and the door was closed. I waited. And waited. After what appears to be a eternity, I stepped out and asked the council askari when I will see the mayor. He curtly told me to wait. What followed is the stuff you only see in cheap Riverwood productions.
The door opened and two fellows wearing ill-fitting and obviously second-hand suits walked in. They asked me whether I was the one who wanted to see the mayor.
They asked me whether I had an appointment and what it was all about. I informed them that I had called and made an appointment.
“Ahh, you are the one following up on the chlorine issue,” I remember one of the goons asking. I corrected him that what I was following up on was an allegation that, what was being applied to the water in Nairobi was not chlorine but chalk.
One of the chaps grinned and it is only then that I noticed he had a broken tooth, a long scar running on his entire left cheek and a deeply malevolent look.
He asked me – in the coldest tone I have ever encountered – whether I valued my life. Panic set in. I was in this place a mayor had been shot, while another predecessor had collapsed and died – apparently from poisoning.
And here I was, in the den of lions, nay, hyenas threatening my life. Before I murmured something back, the scarred fellow casually mentioned where I stayed and threw in the family for good measure lest I was inclined to follow up on this chalk business.
I asked them to let me go to the office and speak to my editor as to whether the story was, after all, that important. Once I was let out, the Nairobi smog tasted like fresh air from Mt Kenya.
I sped to the office straight to the editor’s office. He listened to me and told me that he will personally handle the matter since the life of his reporter was more important than any story.
The reason for this long story is to illustrate the fact that corruption in City Hall has been around for eons. Same forest, different monkeys.
I am wondering: what will happen now that the government has taken over certain functions from City Hall? Will anything change, or are we seeing just a new troop of monkeys?
The city is too big to be left to incompetents. We need to hire someone from the private sector – someone who has overseen business transformation and has impeccable management credentials – to run Nairobi for meaningful change.
We have seen mayors and governors come and go but the situation only gets worse.