IN the last few weeks, the East African nation of Kenya has been in the news for the very wrong reason of widespread unrest similar to the Rwanda genocidal killings of the early 1990s following a highly fraudulent general elections which treacherously saw the emergence of the octogenarian Mr. Mwai Kibaki the incumbent president re-elected for another five years tenure.

At the last count close to 600 people have died and nearly a million people have been displaced in the ethnic killings and arsons that followed the declaration of the controversial President Mwai Kibaki as winner of the December 27, 2007 polls in which all scientific pollsters had predicted that the leading opposition and iconic figure Raila Odinga will emerge victorious. International media stations are agog with terrible stories emerging from the killing fields of Kenya districts and suburbs of Nairobi, Coast Kisumu, Kondele, port city of Mombasa, Eldoret, Kakamega, Rift Valley and Nyanza.

One of the leading British Television Stations - Sky News showed a graphic account of how one innocent and unarmed Kenya national was killed in the most bestial and gruesome manner by his fellow country men on account of tribal and political differences arising from the widely disputed and fraudulent election which Dr. Reuben Abati has already in his intervention published on Sunday January 6,, 2008 compared to the elections that took place in Africa's largest country of Nigeria last year April.

The impression that gory picture conveys to the international audience that watched it is that Africans are so politically intolerant that they can resort to open display of bestiality of the most atrocious level. But amidst these killings that took place in the beautiful country of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Mrs. Wangari Mathai, the Kenyan High Commissioner to Great Britain shamelessly told Sky News on January 4,, 2008 that the killings in his country do not merit international media attention since, according to him, the rioting took place only in a few flashpoints and not all parts of the country.

Abati's intervention titled "Kenya Is Burning: Its Leaders Are Fiddling" aptly captures the shameful scenarios that are playing out in that country that prides itself rightly as the most fascinating country for international tourists who throng the diverse tourist sites for the famous safari. My two visits to Kenya in 2005 showed that it is indeed a beautiful place on earth.

According to available records by political historians, Kenya emerged from the notorious 19th and 20th century European colonialism. At the Berlin Conference of 1885, the Europeans partitioned East Africa into "spheres of influence" even as the British government established the East African Protectorate in 1895 and it became an official British Colony in 1920 and was granted independence on December 12, 1963. For close to three decades after it gained political independence from Britain, Kenya was ruled largely in what seemed like a one party dictatorship on the platform of Kenya African National Union (KANU) which in 1982 manipulated the amendments of the national constitution to legalise a one party regime. But this diabolical constitutional amendment was fortuitously repealed in 1991 and multi-party elections took place. In 2002 Mwai Kibaki won the presidential election under an opposition party's platform that he established in 1997 thus defeating the anointed candidate of his political benefactor Daniel Arap Moi who in 1978 made him vice president when Mr. Moi who ruled Kenya with iron fists took over as president following the demise of the immediate post independence president Jomo Kenyata.

Kibaki is of the ethnic majority Kikuyu tribe which constitutes 22 per cent of the entire population while Raila Odinga hails from the Luhya ethnic stock that constitutes 14 per cent of the population. Kenya is mostly Christian by religious inclinations. In the immediate aftermath of the election-motivated ethnic clashes that have divided the two dominant ethnic groups of the two leading political icons in Kenya, questions are now being asked whether the unrest and the fratricidal killings now taking place are exactly as a result of a bottled up ethnic hatred or is it a result of political motivations that these two large ethnic groups made up largely of the poorest of the poor in Kenya and importantly Christians whose religion abhors murder in all ramifications should engage in this orgy of killings?

Commentators have blamed the alleged manipulations of the presidential polls by President Mwai Kibaki as the most pressing cause of the riots that have taken the shape of ethnic genocide. But other observers believe that both ethnic nationalities have nursed mutual hatred for each other over prolonged periods of time but merely used the disputed elections as the trigger. Going by the first trend of thought, then it is safe to conclude that Mwai Kibaki is merely living up to the bidding of most power hungry African political opportunists who masquerade as leaders in the mould of presidents Paul Biya of Cameroon, Muammar Gadaffi of Libya, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Dos Santos of Angola and even Nigeria's immediate past president Olusegun Obasanjo. These leaders did and are doing everything under the sun to become life presidents through unconstitutional means. In Nigeria the third term plot did not succeed but in Kenya the kibakism (quest to remain in power) of staying in power by all means has led to the uprisings of tragic consequences.

What Kibaki has done is to put to the test the good philosophical postulations of Professor Festus Okafor who had written in his well researched book Africa At A Cross Roads that Africa is the most fascinating continent in the world today. Okafor had reasoned that Africa is fascinating not because of sky scrappers, galaxy of expressways or scientific and technological acumen but simply because of the beautiful location that God the Creator kept it geographically balanced because it has the equator dividing it almost into two equal parts and the latitudinal lines of the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn running across its Northern and Southern land masses respectively.

The erudite philosopher also recalled that Africa is the only continent that has been the proper abode for both the white and black races even in pre-historic times. Apart from Professor Okafor other scholars have shown with empirical evidence that Africa is the original seat of civilisation but one often wonders why African leaders of the contemporary times are not civilised enough to conduct transparent, free and fair elections? Why can't African politicians carry out their political campaigns like the ways and manners the Americans are going about the party primaries which incidentally has Barrack Obama of the Democratic party, a man with Kenyan blood as the frontrunner in his party defeating the wife of former president Clinton in Iowa, a white dominated part of America. This writer concurs with Abati that it is morally reprehensible for political leaders in Kenya to be fiddling while their country burns to ashes of ethnic hatred akin to the Rwandan experience. The members of the international community, importantly the hierarchy of the United Nations must stand up and intervene to put a stop to the killings and ensure that justice is done to all those killed in these mindless crises caused by one man's greed for power.

All those who took part in the killings must be brought to trial and Kenya must immediately convoke a workable truth and reconciliation commission to unravel the causes remote and immediate that gave rise to the mass murders. The helplessness and lack of foresight displayed by leaders of the African Union which had to await the approval and invitation of Kenya's president before intervening must be condemned by all right-thinking Africans. Why should the African Union wait for a party in the crises in Kenya to invite it before it intervenes? The killing of a member of the human race is the killing of all and therefore far transcends sovereign borders. The Africa Union indeed needs a re-birth.

Onwubiko lives in Abuja