Exiled anti-corruption fighter to return to Kenya

By Adrian Croft

LONDON (Reuters) - A government whistleblower who exposed one of Kenya's biggest corruption scandals said on Thursday he would return home for the first time since he fled to Britain three years ago fearing he could be murdered.

John Githongo, Kenya's former anti-graft tsar, will speak at a human rights meeting in Nairobi on Wednesday. But he told Reuters it would only be a short trip and he was coy about whether he planned to return for good.

"I'm not willing to say until I'm on the ground," he said in a telephone interview, adding he was excited to be going home.

Githongo is both admired and condemned in Kenya for revealing the so-called "Anglo Leasing" affair shortly after he quit as the country's first anti-corruption chief in 2005.

The scandal involved state contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars secretly awarded to phantom firms. Githongo's leaked documents forced the resignation of several ministers.

Friends say Githongo was frustrated by a lack of government support and had faced death threats that led him to seek exile in the UK, where he is now an academic at an Oxford University college and vice-president of relief agency World Vision.

His planned return comes after peace talks earlier this year created a power-sharing government to end a post-election crisis that killed some 1,500 people and uprooted many more.

"ENORMOUS RESOURCE"

Githongo said he had been invited back by Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Vice-President Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka.

"I have been greatly encouraged by (both of them) and now believe that it is time to return home and make any contribution I can to the future of my country," he said in a statement.

Anti-corruption activists in Kenya welcomed his return.

"It's excellent he'll be here with us," said Job Ogonda, executive director of Transparency International-Kenya.

"His absence from the country was an indictment of the government of the day ... I would just hope he is coming back permanently. He is an enormous resource," Ogonda told Reuters.

Githongo said he planned to speak his mind about what needed to be done in Kenya, but he declined to comment about whether he might return to government.

"I have no political affiliations. My obligations are solely to the people of Kenya -- particularly the poor, the dispossessed and those in need," he said.

Githongo also declined to comment on the anti-corruption performance of President Mwai Kibaki's new cabinet, saying he wanted to check the situation on the ground first.

Asked if enough had been done to promote reconciliation after the post-election violence, the most traumatic chapter in Kenya's post-independence history, Githongo said: "I want to see that. I am praying that that has happened."

(Additional reporting by Daniel Wallis in Nairobi; Editing by Barry Moody)

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