Much as Mr Githongo has fought gallantly against grand corruption, I had a disturbing feeling that I was part of a weird circus as I listened to him deliver his anti-corruption sermon at the Hilton Hotel recently.

It was stuff of great irony that Mr Githongo was being hosted by the civil society, a sector which itself is largely among the main perpetrators of the same ills like nepotism and grand corruption that it vehemently condemns in government.

That Mr Githongo's brief return was an anti-climax, for me underscored by the fact that he sounded much like a great fisherman who had come home to his hungry family empty-handed - not just without the fish, but also without his fishing net and, therefore, without the promise of being able to do a better job tomorrow.

It was an unenviable task for fisherman Githongo, as he tried and failed dismally, to fill my empty belly with a great story, narrating how he had inadvertently lost his precious fishing net while trying to catch crocodiles.

But why, I wondered, did the great fisherman think himself a crocodile hunter in the first place? What was he up to deluding himself that his civil society fishing net would be effective against crocodiles?

Mr Githongo's helplessness against the crocodiles begs the following questions: Does he know the enemy well enough to fight it?

Can an effective war against corruption be the single issue campaign he is currently engaged in? Can he defeat corruption and related ills relying on the West?

To see corruption for what it is - not as a monster standing alone, but as a small link in a long monstrous chain of evils that have impoverished us - we only need to appreciate the grave irony that for three years, Mr Githongo had sought and got refuge in the same West where our stolen money is stashed in secret bank accounts.

If the West is our ally in the war on corruption, it would have facilitated Mr Githongo to access and return our looted billions.

But since it is not, it not only had him barking up the wrong tree, it took him to the wrong forest where he was bogged down in the barren arena of high profile lecture circuits as the West's obnoxious foot soldiers pillaged the motherland unhindered.

No wonder, instead of logically working for law enforcement, tracking our looted billions, Mr Githongo ended up working for a Western charity that gives us pittance to stop us revolting.

Mr Githongo's self-exile should clear the fog in our understanding of the hallowed place the West-facilitated grand corruption occupies in the current world order.

If the West was our ally in the war against corruption, it would not be the gleeful ultimate beneficiary of the proceeds of the vice.

The Githongo story is also a classic example of how exile is an important tool the West uses to control post colony.

By being enticed into exile, trouble makers threatening Western hegemonic interests are taken out of the colony to the West where they become irrelevant to the struggles in the post colony.

It is very likely that had Mr Githongo resisted the allure of exile, he would have become a really formidable focal point for the war against grand corruption.

He could even have started and led the required revolution to fix the many ills that hold us down.

Further, the poverty that corruption and other ills like skewed trade breed in the Third World, helps maintain Western hegemony. Third World poverty is one way the West assures itself an affluent lifestyle.

For example, if Africa became rich and we begun demanding resources the way China is doing, world prices of commodities would soar, making it unviable for the West to maintain its resources intensive lifestyle. So we must be kept poor.

Hence, though we must do all we can to stop corruption, we must stop corrupting the fight against corruption by relying on the West, whose prescription that we limit ourselves to condemning State corruption and human rights abuses - the signature tune of civil society organisations - is a sure way to lose the war.

To win, the response to corruption needs to be as complex and variegated as corruption itself. The anti-graft war must become a full fledged people-driven campaign for the fundamental social, political and economic emancipation.

We must also make grand corruption a capital offence.

Otherwise, Mr Githongo's single-minded focus on fighting corruption will merely corrupt the anti-corruption agenda itself and divert attention from other issues of no less moment for the struggling masses.

Mr Omtatah is a playright and a commentator on social issues.