A former Citizen TV anchor, on the night of Wednesday, February 5, narrated how he got blocked from accessing KBC precincts after raising a concern that irked the president but managed to make a return after more than 30 years.
While appearing on JKLive, former Citizen TV Breakfast Show panelist Mutegi Njau disclosed that in 1988, while interviewing the then head of civil service at a press conference, his query was captured on tape and later aired by the station, resulting in his ex-communication.
He further pointed out that the station had aired the clip because, based on technology that was used at the time, it was difficult for the editors to cut out sections of the interview and had to run the entire clip.
Mutegi only accessed the station in 2019, more than 30 years since he was banned from ever setting foot.
"I interviewed the former head of civil service and they built the thing (a statue) at Uhuru Park and I asked him, 'why are you building that thing to celebrate 10 years of Moi?'.
"He said that thing could not be destroyed by any earthquake...After that interview, the tape was analogue and could not be edited and so it ran," narrated the veteran.
"From that day, I only went to KBC last year (2019) November. I was barred from entering there. I never entered that building," he expounded.
During the wide-ranging interview, Njau also revealed a time former President Daniel Moi terminated his call. At the time the journalist was working on a corruption case that touched on one of his ministers.
The former president had questioned why the journalist was pursuing a story aimed at tainting the minister's image, but Njau maintained that his focus was exposing corruption and not maliciously pursuing the minister.
"One Saturday morning, he called the landline directly into the newsroom and asked me who I was," the veteran scribe recounted.
"He then said, 'This story of my minister I heard you are writing, which is it? Why are you looking to taint his name?' I tried to explain to him that we were writing a story, not about the minister but corruption and he hang up," continued the journalist.
The story had revolved around the mismanagement of fertilizer funds in Bungoma.
