Listen In 1976, Jackson Angaine became the most senior Cabinet minister to join the campaign started by the Gikuyu, Embu and Meru Association (GEMA) community leaders seeking to change the constitution. The intention was to bar the then Vice President, Daniel arap Moi, from automatically assuming the presidency in the event of the death of […]
Listen In 1992, President Daniel arap Moi made an announcement at a KANU party rally in Mau Stadium in Meru District: Jackson Itirithia Kalweo was going to be one of his point men in the region. The President singled him out from a group of several officials in the ruling party. Why Kalweo? The question […]
Listen George Kamau Muhoho, a one-time priest who rose through the ranks of the Catholic Church administration to serve as Private Secretary to Pope Paul IV, left it all behind to enter local politics and serve his country’s people instead. He has been a Member of Parliament for Juja, served under President Daniel arap Moi […]
Listen George Mutua Ndotto served in two Ministries during his five-year term and was considered one of President Moi’s key point men in Ukambani against the bulwark of opposition politics. A career civil servant and Director of Trade, Ndotto contested and won the Kitui Central parliamentary seat in the controversial 1988 mlolongo queue-voting election. He […]
Listen There were two celebrated professors in President Daniel arap Moi’s administration: Moi, the self-proclaimed “Professor of Politics”, and his long-serving Vice President, George Muthengi Saitoti, a Professor of Mathematics. Saitoti acquired his Master of Science in Mathematics degree from the University of Sussex and later, in 1972, a PhD from the University of Warwick. […]
Listen At the peak of his political career in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, so close was Godfrey Gitahi (GG) Kariuki to President Daniel arap Moi that it became habitual for commentators to refer to the relationship between the two in derogatory terms. In the initial years of Moi’s leadership, the second president […]
Listen Gideon Musyoka Ndambuki was one of the technocrats in President Daniel arap Moi’s Cabinet who climbed his way up the ranks of the ruling party, KANU, to become its National Organising Secretary. For some reason, Ndambuki served in four government ministries in the five years of Moi’s final term between 1998 and 2002. During […]
Listen Not much is known about Francis Loile Polis Lotodo’s early life. Despite being a key public figure who fought for the rights of his community, he kept a low profile. The little information available about his early life points to a staunch Catholic who attended Kapenguria Upper Primary School and later joined a secondary […]
Listen The humble three-bedroom rural abode of newly-appointed Minister for Sports and Culture, Francis Mwanzia Nyenze, became home for a night for President Daniel arap Moi during a two-day tour of Kitui district in the days when mere proximity to the President was a ticket to power. Nyenze, then in his late 30s and serving […]
Listen Francis Yekoyada Omoto Masakhalia, Kenya’s seventh Minister of Finance, went down in history as Kenya’s shortest serving minister in this role under President Daniel arap Moi. He served only six months in the job. He entered the Finance office on 27 February 1999 after serving as Minister of Industrial Development, and left in August […]