Month: April 2022

Listen Prior to his appointment as Minister for Tourism and Wildlife in 2005, Morris Mwachondo Dzoro was the Assistant Minister for Public Service. His rise to the helm of the Tourism and Wildlife docket came through rather tragic circumstances as his predecessor, Emmanuel Karisa Maitha, had died suddenly on 27 August 2004. Maitha was not […]

Listen Appointed Minister for Public Service in 2006, this banker-turned-priest, Reverend Moses Akaranga, is remembered for initiating performance contracting and the Rapid Results Initiative (RRI) in the civil service. He also oversaw the review of salaries and pensions for the entire public service sector Appointed Minister for Public Service in 2006, this banker-turned-priest, Reverend Moses […]

Listen Simeon Nyachae was an untiring go-getter. Over the years good fortune ushered him into the realms of power and fame. His journey in the public and political life saw him serve the Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki governments. No doubt a child of privilege — the son of colonial chief Musa Nyandusi — he served […]

Listen Peter Njeru Ndwiga, the Minister for Cooperative Development and Marketing in the first of President Mwai Kibaki’s two terms, was one of the most loyal and non-controversial ministers. The Member of Parliament for Manyatta Constituency was also the only Cabinet Minister at the time from the then Embu and Mbeere districts. The political collaboration […]

Listen Mohammed Yusuf Haji sports the classic door-knocker beard. It is a style he adopted after he left the provincial administration in 1997, when he was nominated to Parliament by former President Daniel arap Moi. He has mellowed with age too, in a departure from times past – in June 1988, for instance, he earned […]

Listen When it comes to loyalty, few men exemplify it as much as Ochilo George Mbogo Ayacko, whose decision to stick with his political mentor, Raila Odinga, saw him demoted from a powerful ministry to a less influential one, and then fired from President Mwai Kibaki’s Cabinet one short year later. The soft-spoken but fierce […]

Listen With his unmistakable picture of calm and serenity even in stormy political meetings, Wycliffe Ambetsa Oparanya became President Mwai Kibaki’s alter ego in the tumultuous Government of National Unity formed after the disputed 2007 elections. In the days of performance contracting in government during the President’s final term, the now 64-year-old Governor of Kakamega […]

Listen Njenga Karume and Mwai Kibaki were the best of friends. But how Karume, a Standard 4 primary school dropout, could hobnob with an economist, who had not only lectured at the prestigious Makerere University but also passed all his exams with a distinction at both Makerere and at the London School of Economics, was […]

Listen If ever the Mwai Kibaki administration that swept to power in 2003 needed a face to symbolise a new beginning, then Najib Balala, the former Mayor of Mombasa, fit the bill perfectly. In picking the Member of Parliament (MP) for Mvita, Mombasa’s inner city, President Kibaki chose a performer and an early bloomer who […]

Listen William Samoei Ruto’s entry into Mwai Kibaki’s Cabinet is one more instance proving that politics in Kenya is a spectacle of continuous experiments with various combinations and permutations of strange bedfellows. Indeed, as strange bedfellows go, none could be stranger, at first blush, than Kibaki and Ruto. In his first term, Kibaki presided over […]