Listen To friends and foes alike, Joseph Kamau Kamere’s appointment as Kenya’s third Attorney General came as an absolute shocker. The only person who must have smiled, perhaps sardonically, for days on end at this most unlikely appointment was Charles Njonjo, independent Kenya’s pioneer AG and the man believed to have recommended Kamere to President […]
Listen Johnstone Muendo Makau was a flamboyant, youthful Minister for Information and Broadcasting who spent most of his time fending off local and international criticism of President Daniel arap Moi’s government for muzzling media freedom. An outgoing politician who nursed presidential ambitions, Makau was at the centre of scathing criticism from the Kenyan opposition for […]
Listen Among the young men who President Jomo Kenyatta chose as his Cabinet ministers at independence in 1963, Dr Njoroge Mungai was arguably the most ambitious. Others suspected of harbouring aspirations to the presidency included Tom Mboya and Charles Njonjo, although it turned out that the latter would end up holding brief for Vice President […]
Listen As a Cabinet minister and the Secretary General of KANU, John Joseph ‘JJ’ Kamotho was famed for his habitual terse and snappy statements, especially in defending the government of President Daniel arap Moi and the ruling party. Kamotho’s political ascension started in 1979, when he was elected MP for Kangema. Although he lost his […]
Listen John Kipkorir Sambu, the Member of Parliament for Mosop between 1992 and 2002, was among the few post-independent Kenyan Cabinet ministers to be sacked for being independent-minded. Currently a farmer in Uasin Gishu County, he was a community worker with the Church of the Province of Kenya (CPK) Eldoret Diocese before he ventured into […]
Listen One fine day after a graduation ceremony at Egerton University in Njoro, John Koech, a Cabinet minister, made his way to President Daniel arap Moi’s home for the customary luncheon that followed such events, only to be denied entry. Livid at the humiliation, he headed straight to the Nation Media Group’s Nakuru Bureau and […]
Listen John Musembi Kyalo was a technocrat who left a rich, extensive and successful career in the civil service to join politics, becoming one of President Daniel arap Moi’s trusted and loyal Cabinet ministers. This was the minister reported to have used trickery to put up a multi-million shilling hospital in Makueni in his native […]
Listen What comes to mind when one converses with James Charles Nakhwanga Osogo is William Shakespeare’s dictum in the play titled As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts…” At […]
Listen Jeremiah Joseph Mwaniki Nyagah is best remembered as a politician who opted to retire from politics to a village life, having served with distinction in the ministries of Agriculture and Education. Born at Igari, Embu, on November 24, 1920, Nyagah started primary education in 1925 at the Anglican Missionary School at Kabare in present-day […]
Listen As Kenya approached independence, a young Jeremiah Kiereini was employed by the colonial government as part of a ‘pipeline’ constituted to ‘rehabilitate’ Mau Mau detainees. This was 1955 and marked the beginning of a government career that would span three decades and see him rise through the ranks to ultimately occupy the highest post […]