African Uncensored Founder John Allan Namu narrated how his exposé on suspected Rwanda genocide supporter, Félicien Kabuga rendered his wife Sheena Makena jobless.
Appearing on NTV’s Singleton Stories, Namu said that back in 2012 his wife was forced to take a three Months leave (two unpaid), after threat against him and his family became rampant over the Félicien Kabuga’s exposé, which turned out to be 'false'.
Namu narrates that he got leads that the suspected Rwanda genocide supporter, Kabuga was staying in Kenya and that’s when he sought to find his whereabouts through an investigative piece that was named “The Footsteps of Felicien Kabuga”.
Allan Namu's Narrates
"In the year, 2011 I had just moved to the Nation… then in December source of mine comes and tells me a fantastical story about Felicien Kabuga and how he is in the Country. And I’m like this is a story worth telling.
"We go out and started following his trail picking clues. I go back and share my evidence with my boss. It goes through the editorial committee. The story is watched at least 7 times and changes here, going through line by line. Then I start to receive threats, some of my sources have been threatened. This had also happened early theta there were some discomforts"
"For two months while I was doing a story here, my wife and my two children were in the safe house with me. I had to pull them out of kindergarten, it wasn’t a big deal but my wife had to leave work to take care of them. which was a big deal."
"She went on leave for the first month, then unpaid leave for the second month. The threats piled up kidogo and Just as we were releasing the story, we took off to another country and this is going into month. While we were in hiding, she loses her job”
Also Read: John Allan Namu reveals the darkest moment of his life
Getting the Story Wrong
"We left the Friday before the story aired, so the stories runs and the message I’m getting there is a huge reaction about it. People are upset about it…then I get a call from a contact in the Military in Communication and he says are you in Town, there is a press conference at the Police Headquarters …later on I watch news bulletin and it had that as one of the stories.
Here is this man, wearing the exact same T-shirt that I had in that photograph and it is a businessman from Isiolo. It hit me very hard. Because when I got into this profession, as I said I wanted to do things right; this by far up until that point the biggest story I had ever done and I got it wrong.
My wife was there and she was the biggest pillar of my support”
Mr. Kabuga was later on arrested on May 16, 2020 in France and he is being imprisoned at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, The Hague.