I hope he resigned.

No one resigns in Kenya. No one who controls a budget of seventeen billion shillings resigns in Kenya. Ever. They either die in office or they are fired. Anyone who believes that Major-General Michael Gichangi "resigned for personal reasons" as Director-General of the National Intelligence Service is living in a fool's paradise. He was fired, so the pundits and the men with the inside knowledge tell one and all.

But what if he did resign, and that his resignation was indeed for personal reasons? This would be a first modern Kenya. Senior public officers controlling billions of shillings do not simply resign. They will die in office if that is what it takes. Should one care to examine the list of State and public officers and parastatal bosses who have died in office over the last twenty years, they will swiftly disabuse themselves that there is a core sense of honour at that level. Mr Gichangi might very well be the first honourable State officer to resign his office.

The State of Kenyan intelligence remains shrouded in mystery in a hall of smoke and mirrors. Perhaps that is a necessity; after all spies do not go around telling one and all that they are spies and what they are up to. Mr Gichangi has been blamed for the failing to warn the right people at the right time of terrorist attacks. he has been accused of incompetence for failing even to identify the men behind the sugar smuggling into Kenya that has done so much to undermine the stability of the sugar sector. He has been accused of failing to keep an eye on the "local political networks" that have taken leaves out of al Shabaab's handbook and sown so much mayhem in Lamu, Mombasa, Moyale, West Pokot and Turkana. In all this he has kept his head down and remained silent like the Sphinx.

By all accounts Mr Gichangi has been a competent intelligence boss. While the National Police and the Defence Forces have been riven with internal grumbling about tribalism, corruption and abuse of office by senior officers, the National Intelligence Service has not suffered embarrassing leaks about its operations. I suspect that the leaks about timely intelligence that was ignored is a campaign being waged by some loyal intelligence officers who did not wish to see their boss unfairly cashiered for failings that were not his or his agency's fault.

Then there are the rumours that Mr Gichangi is being looked at askance because of his hand in the indictments of the President and Deputy President at the International Criminal Court. Their supporters argue that Mr Gichangi and his agency should not have co-operated with the Waki Commission nor should they have honoured Mwai Kibaki's commitment to the ICC Prosecutor of "full co-operation." By following lawful orders, Mr Gichangi has been painted in a bad light. The irony does not escape me.

I hope that Mr Gichangi resigned and was not pushed out. For a former fighter pilot, he was remarkably restrained. Fighter pilots are not known for their modesty; they are superstars of the air and they know it. Mr Gichangi has comported himself in all his public dealings with dignity. An excellent example was what happened during the Westgate siege. Rather than posture in front of the cameras like his colleagues in the security establishment, he kept a very low profile. When Kenyans exposed the lies and misinformation the others were feeding the public, it is remarkable how fast they turned on the intelligence boss, while it is their missteps that brought them ignominy. If he resigned, it I hope it is because for once an honourable man was unwilling to remain in a room where he was treated like a skunk for doing the right thing in the right way.