Author: NLM Correspondent

By NLM Writer As soon as the former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Luis Moreno Ocampo revealed the names of six Kenyans who he believed bore the greatest responsibility for the 2007/2008 post-election violence, he also inadvertently set the country on a full-blown campaign mode. For Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, who were the prominent names in the list of six, it would be a campaign to save themselves from the jaws of the beast. And so, as the 2013 elections approached, the two, who had formed a coalition, looked for something that would divert public attention from…

By Antony Mutunga Around the world, governments are concerned about the increasing threat that financial crime has on economic growth. Many companies and people are affected by the trillion-dollar industry which is as old as the concept of money. Sadly, the perception that most people have is that financial crime has no real victim or cost. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Financial crime, which lacks a universally accepted definition, can be described as any act or attempted act whereby an external or internal agent illegally manipulates, defrauds, appropriates or circumvents legislation against an individual, institution or government. It…

By Kevin Motaroki Performing artist and scholar Salome Mshai once argued, “We need to be wary of the tendency to consider our education system solely as a factory churning out human resources, and begin to think about how we must use it to prepare the next generation to participate fully in all aspects of life.” Her summary of what ails Kenya’s education system is as relevant today as it was after independence. Ever since the founding president Jomo Kenyatta declared “poverty, ignorance and disease” as the greatest threats to our nationhood, the overriding objective of successive governments has been to…

By Shadrack Muyesu Sometime in 2004, Parliament amended the law to accord itself defining powers in the constitutional review process. Vide the Constitution of Kenya Review (Amendment) Act, 2004, it established that it had power to alter a draft constitution emerging from a consultative process before it was subjected to a referendum. The matter went to the High Court, which ruled in Parliament’s favour. In ‘Onyango & 12 others v Attorney General & 2 others miscellaneous civil application no 677 of 2005’, Justice (s) Joseph Nyamu, Roselyne Wendoh and Anyara Emukule found that, acting in its representative capacity, Parliament had…

By Fuad Abdirahman In Kenya, talk of revolution has always been on people’s lips, but the one unanswered question remains whether citizens can ever get fed up enough to revolt against their – in the words of various proponents of the idea – corrupt, uncaring, despotic government. So far what we have witnessed are trend online fashioned along the lines of a tired populace that will one day rise against its oppressor. Before the now-famous handshake happened in March 2018, the conversation on resistance against the current regime was momentous, with opposition chief Raila Odinga declaring himself as the people’s…

By David Onjili It is not an ideal world. If it were, James Aggrey Orengo would not just be or have been president; according to some observers, he’d also be the undisputed kingpin of the Luo nation. Politics, admittedly, is a contest and in Kenya it defies the laws of human nature and hierarchy. In the midst of the enduring anomaly that is our brand of politics, the second-term senator has had to adjust to be content with being one of the leading minds of opposition politics, parliament and the corridors of justice. His constituents consider him a gift to…

By Fuad Abdirahman In times gone by, particularly between the 1960s to the late ‘90s, university students were a thorn in the flesh for the state, giving autocratic regimes sleepless nights on account of their radical “subversive” activities. This is how units like the dreaded Special Branch – now more or less the National Intelligence Services – were born. Its members were – sometimes recruited students themselves – were deployed to lecture halls to spy for government. It is university students who championed the cause for multi-party democracy and agitated for change when no one else could stand up to…

By Zach Vertin The Horn of Africa will be the first casualty,” opined one dejected Somali, shaking his head. He might have been talking about terrorism, or climate change, or the famines that have more than once devastated his region. Instead he was referring to a toxic new contagion imported from the Middle East—the Gulf crisis that, since 2017, has pitted Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Bahrain against Qatar and its ally Turkey. That feud is now infecting the Horn, a neighbourhood already fighting to cure its own long-standing ills. Turkey features regularly in new debates…

BY NLM Writer A disastrous drought in Somalia could leave some 2.2 million people – nearly 18 percent of the population – faced with severe hunger during the July-September period, the FAO has warned. The UN agency issued a special alert on Somalia, indicating that the number of hungry people in the country this year is expected to be 40 percent higher than estimates made at the beginning of 2019. A deteriorating nutritional status is also of major concern, according to the alert. Acute malnutrition rates as well as the number of acutely malnourished children being admitted to therapeutic feeding…

By Fuad Abdirahman In May 2013, through a sham election where voting was conducted by show of hands, Ahmed Mohamed Islam, aka Sheikh Madobe was declared winner; he was unopposed, the other candidates having pulled out of the race days and hours before it was held – reportedly intimidated by the powerful Ras Kamboni militia group loyal to Madobe, and with blessing of ‘friendly’ foreign nations. When he joined the Ras Kamboni Movement, he quickly rose to become a high ranking member of the group, on account of his cosy relationship with Hassan Turki, a powerful military leader in the…