Abbas Gullet of Kenya Red Cross Society By Mdadisi Mmoja in Nairobi.
The press conference called to appeal for financial contributions to assist in mitigating the drought situation was tense and journalists assumed it was because of the sorry state of the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the hunger stricken parts of the country. The body chemistry of the people on the high table was like North and South Pole, even though they were smart enough to conceal it. But suspicion and guilt were palpable, at least from a trained journalist’s eye.
One particular individual in this gathering looked lost and odd. Paul Melly the CEO at Kenya’s oldest newspaper The East Africa Standard looked lonely and in deep thoughts for most parts of this function. Definitely, the man was in the wrong place at the write time. He was in his own world. For a man so much accustomed to smooth, downhill rides and a knack for competing with Daniel Ndambuki, alias Churchill for TV airspace, it must have been humbling that Melly was not even on the high table on this day much as it was refreshing to many that he was not pontificating on the virtues of life in his provincial accent has become irritating that no one seems to like him any more.
For many reasons, Melly’s distance and forlorn look was the theme of the day. It may be the best illustration that time has come for the Kenya to do everything in her powers and identify an alternative voice to the country’s self serving media and its entourage of people, both as editors and managers.
When Kenya last experienced drought and famine, it was this self same Melly who together with Abbas Gullet, the attention-seeking secretary general of the Kenya Red Cross, who both organized a humanitarian response called the MERCY TRAIN. Many Kenyan not only remembers it, but the fact that the response was impeccable. It brought out the best of emotional side of Kenyans, but also the worst of the people like Melly, Gitahi and Gullet. That was in 2009 and to this day the public has yet to receive a proper account of what was received and how it was spent, much as there are serious accountability questions within the Abbas Gullet led Kenya Red Cross over the many transaction the organisation takes as a humanitarian.
Strangely, it is the same two individuals who are on top of the game this time round asking Kenyans to contribute generously while at the same time pointing fingers at the government for having done little to prepare ‘after the alarm warnings’ were sounded as early as January. Not learning lessons and re-arming its crisis response machineries. Gullet is a funny, double faced man. Beyond the veneer of a caring individual, whose life effuses the spirit of humanitarianism is a self conceited man, ambitious, mean, not so clean and a suave political schemer. This is a man for who the so-called humanitarian efforts and politics are the same side of the same coin and there is no limit.
Gullet has come to personalize the humanitarian industry in Kenya. This is not exactly a bad thing. The problem is that he is using it for lopsided reasons, for selfish reasons where he blackmails and ramrods’ his way round to achieve his objectives.
When one of his staff members questioned him about serious financial audit questions, he didn’t waste time in sacking him and went to the extent of bribing a section of the media to kill the story of how the MERCY TRAIN money was spent.
A local weekly paper, last week named him among those people who have ambition of succeeding Kibaki and who have been using means to get cash from the US government to bankroll his supposed presidential campaign. The man has spies all over town. There are specific editors who are on his payroll and who would sound him out whenever his story, or KRC, is about to published.
When he appeared on Citizen TV last Sunday, he insisted so much that the money will be put to proper use. He repeated the word so many times that the very idea of accountability overshadowed the bigger humanitarian picture. Was the man hiding something? Why was he obsessed with accountability and not about the crucial concern of ensuring that food relief food reaches out to areas that badly needs it?
Closely connected with this, is the man’s penchant for arrogance. The man is said to have no time for small time donors. He prefers big corporate entities that pour millions worth of shillings in the humanitarian efforts. One CEO of a middle level insurance company was so disgusted when he appeared at the KRC headquarters in South C last week. The CEO had scheduled to donate Sh200, 000 towards the Kenyans for Kenya initiative, but when he arrived at the KRC offices; his amount was too small to pull Gullet out of his office, which apparently is just next to the boardroom. Gullet instead dispatched his deputy Dr James Kisia to receive the ‘small money’.
The CEO, name withheld, was so distraught that he vowed never to work with KRC once again because of the snub he received from Gullet Those in the know believe there is a serious collusion between Gullet and the KRC’s auditors because the level of financial misappropriation is believed to be high especially after he arbitrarily fired the institutions financial manager in 2008 after he discovered some gaping holes in the financial statements. Investigations by The Weekly Vision on line show Gullet is just another village dictator and a larger than life within the Red Cross establishment. The man neither consults nor brooks dissent and those who have been as naive as to confront him have never lived at the institution to tell their story.
Gullet is one man who has come to personalize humanitarian efforts in Kenya for the purposes of personal gain. If he were as truthful as he has portrayed himself, plus with his well concealed presidential ambitions, he has been a silent observer in the MERCY TRAIN scandal that even saw staff at the Standard newspaper deducted millions of shillings for the cause.
If Melly is smelly over the MERCY TRAIN scandal, Gullet is no less stinky and everything done at KRC is geared towards bloating his already bloated. It is going to be interesting to see what will happen on Friday when corporate bodies are expected to contribute to the kitty.
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