Rather belatedly, the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission has jumped on the bandwagon of those congratulating the Judiciary for recognising that a great wrong was committed to a number of people during the heyday of Mr Moi's repressive regime, and offered them a measure of compensation.This is, perhaps, in recognition that it is precisely part of the TJRC's mandate to seek the truth about past injustices and to reconcile the victims and their oppressors while at the same time offering the latter some form of restorative justice.

It is obvious that the 21 people "compensated" last week are a fraction of those who were tortured, abducted, detained and even murdered during the obsessively security-conscious regimes of both Mzee Kenyatta, and more so, Mr Moi.

There may be hundreds others who were not actually accommodated at the Nyayo House torture chambers but who, all the same, suffered excessively for their political beliefs.

They remain voiceless, either because they cannot rush to the courts in search of justice, or because they are dead.Who, for instance, can compensate Mr Kenneth Matiba and Mr Charles Rubia whose health was broken in detention for fighting for their people?

And how many millions of shillings should Prime Minister Raila Odinga seek for wasting a significant part his life behind bars? Mr Koigi wa Wamwere? Mr Martin Shikuku? The list is endless.

To attempt and compensate all those Kenyans who have suffered over the years won't happen. To attempt to reopen all these cases will be to pry open a Pandora's Box, which can never be closed again.

What Kenyans must do is to remain vigilant. Subtle forms of torture and human rights violations, mainly psychological, continue today.

It would be naive to expect that the sadists who enjoyed inflicting pain at Nyayo House have all reformed.