Who’ll police these highway robbers?

I said I had Sh1,000 while touching my chest pocket to confirm whether the Sh1,000 note I had left there as I fuelled to leave Nairobi was intact.

“Bring the money,” he murmured.

I produced the money and he returned my driving licence. But I stood unmoved.

“What are you waiting for?” he thundered .

“The receipt,” I said.

“There is no receipt for Sh1,000. If you want a receipt, come with me across the road with the entire Sh3,000, ” he said as he grabbed the driving licence from me once again, pointing to the other side of the road where a crowd of hapless motorists stood around the Nissan X-trail police car, pleading their cases with junior officers under the supervision of an inspector.

I crossed over with the policeman, my Sh1,000 note tucked inside the driving licence in his hand.

He handed the document over to his colleagues in the car and called one of them aside for what he said was a briefing.

I calmly stood by and confronted the policeman, demanding a receipt for my money.

I insisted that I was ready to go for more money to make it Sh3,000.

But in a daring move that left me speechless, the policeman put the driving licence in my hand and told me to go, having tucked the Sh1,000 note in his pocket.

I thought of shouting but I realised that a confrontation with the gang of robbers in uniform would definitely leave me in a weak position because they could deny everything that had transpired and put me in on a trumped up charge.

I crossed the road back to my car, pulled out my mobile phone and scrolled down the phonebook for relevant numbers to report the daylight robbery that I was sure had transpired the whole morning and was bound to go on till sunset.

I called two emergency police numbers in my phonebook to no avail. I called 999. No one picked the call.

I called the office in Nairobi looking for our crime reporters in the hope of getting from them a number I could call.