The late billionaire Jeremiah Gitau Kiereini in his 2014 book, A Daunting Journey, admitted to nearly shooting former president Jomo Kenyatta's secretary, Harun Muturi.
In the book, Kiereini revealed that in the 70s he almost killed Muturi, Mamba Village's proprietor and father to incumbent Solicitor General and accounting officer at the State Law Office, Njee Muturi.
Kiereini was at the Nairobi’s Mayfair Hotel in the company of some of the most powerful people in the country at the time on the night of the incident.
According to Kiereini, what led to the near-fatal shooting ordeal was when their conversation narrowed down to the then, attorney general Charles Njonjo.
Kiereini wrote that in the week before the near-shooting incident, Njonjo had been castigated by legislators for holding a parcel of land in Surrey, England, an act that was termed unpatriotic in light of Kenya’s colonisation by the British.
Kiereini revealed that he felt the need to defend his friend, Njonjo, who was also accused of being disrespectful of Africans and carried himself in a superior manner, despite growing up as the eldest son of a chief.
Muturi suggested that Njonjo and Kiereini be thrown out of Kenya.
“Thii ukere murumegwo Njonjo ninii ndoiga (Go tell your husband Njonjo, I'm the one who said so),” Muturi viciously remarked, an insult that infuriated Kiereni as he admits in the book.
"I was so enraged at Muturi’s foul and vulgar insult that I decided I would shoot him. I went to my car in an overwhelming rage, to get my gun.
I realised that none of the group knew I had a weapon, and, for a second, in a red blaze of fury, I even considered shooting them all! But as I walked out into the fresh air over to the parking lot and looked around at the everyday world surrounding me, I came to my senses." – JG Kiereini in A Daunting Journey
Kiereini was a senior civil servant in the Kenyatta era and served as the Minister for Defence. He was described as a mau mau oath-taker, seemingly of two minds, both for and against, loyal and disloyal.
