Why JB Muturi was not reinstated as Magistrate after acquittal in Sh1million bribery case

“I wish to plead not guilty to this most malicious charge intended to defeat the process of justice”.

That was the response by the then Principal Magistrate Justin Bedan Njoka Muturi when he appeared in a Nairobi Chief Magistrate’s Court in March 1997 on criminal charges.

He was arraigned before Nairobi Chief Magistrate Uniter Pamela Kidulla.

Muturi faced charges of soliciting one million shillings as an inducement to assist a suspect who was facing criminal charges in his court.

The magistrate would later be acquitted after the investigating officer and the Criminal Investigation Department, now the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) failed to produce in court evidence of telephone conversations between Muturi and Masaba Hospital founder Dr Geoffrey Joel Momanyi.

However, the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), then headed by Chief Justice Bernard Chunga declined to reinstate him in what was seen as a lack of confidence in the judgement.

Twenty-five years later, the matter has resurfaced in public circles after the two-term Speaker of the National Assembly thrust himself into the national politics marked by acrimonious fallout with his longtime friend and political confidant President Uhuru Kenyatta for his deputy turned political nemesis William Ruto.

Muturi had allegedly solicited the bribe “to sort out” a criminal case they were facing before his court.

At the end of a fierce court battle between him and the Momanyis, Muturi was acquitted in late 1997 but the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) did not reinstate him as a Magistrate.

Although the then prosecutor Senior Superintendent Jonathan Mwalili appealed against the ruling, the matter did not proceed any further.

Momanyi and his wife Fellgona Akothe Momanyi had been arraigned before Magistrate Muturi on July 28, 1995 on charges of defrauding the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) Ksh347,000.

It was a major scandal at the time involving many hospitals and medical practitioners countrywide, in which the country had lost over two billion shillings.

This was part of the Ksh2 billion that NHIF had lost to fraudsters at the time where Akothe admitted before the court that a tape-recorded conversation was her and Muturi negotiating the deal.

The prosecution told the court that Muturi used his clerk Florence Ogutu to solicit bribes from the couple with the assistant testifying that the couple had approached Muturi pleading to be assisted in the fraud charge.

Muturi, however, denied the allegations concerning the alleged meddling with criminal case No. 2782/95 on different days between August 1996 and 1997 and soliciting for the said amount as an inducement to acquit or assist the accused couple (who are now both deceased).

On March 20, 1997, Muturi told the court that he was not guilty “to this most fabricated, malicious charge by the accused” and he was released on a Ksh300,000 bail and ordered to deposit his passport and other travel documents with the court.

However, he would later successfully vie for the Siakago parliamentary seat through a by-election in 1999 which was occasioned by the death of the then Siakago MP Cyrus Ita

He won on a Kanu Party ticket.

He was re – elected in 2002 but lost in the subsequent elections of 2007 but remained loyal to Kanu Party which was then headed by Uhuru Kenyatta as the national chairman and official leader of the opposition.

When President Kenyatta succeeded his predecessor the late president Mwai Kibaki in 2013, he helped Muturi to become Speaker of National Assembly to be re – elected to the esteemed position in 2017, where he seats today.

Through president Kenyatta’s majority control in parliament, Muturi was elected Speaker of the National Assembly for both the 11th and 12th Parliament of Kenya.

However, as a common saying goes that politics has no permanent friends or enemies, Muturi has since moved to the Democratic Party which is under the Kenya Kwanza Alliance headed by UDA party leader and Deputy President Ruto, who is gunning for the presidency.

Nonetheless, in a recent television interview, Muturi who had initially indicated his intention to vie for the presidency on the DP ticket said President Kenyatta would be part of history after August 9, 2022 General Election, a statement that did not seat well in some political quarters.

The charge against Muturi stated that on various dates between August 1996 and March 1997, while he was a Principal Magistrate in the Judicial Service Commission, attached to the Law Courts in Nairobi, he corruptly solicited one million shillings from Momanyi, as inducement to acquit or assist him in a criminal case, which was before him.

The proprietor of Masaba Hospital in Nairobi faced charges of alleged swindling of the National Hospital Insurance Claims through false claims.