Author: NLM Correspondent

BY Emeka Mayaka-Gekara National Intelligence Service director-general Phillip Kameru has been working over-time. He is the cog around which President Uhuru Kenyatta’s anti-graft drive revolves. He, alongside, George Kinoti, the Director of Criminal Investigations, have been tasked with cleaning up government. It is on the basis of their brief to the President that the dramatic arrests of NYS looting suspects were made. For instance, following the spy-in-chief’s dossier on the NYS scandal, an angry Kenyatta on May 10, summoned Public Service CS Margaret Kobia to State House for a dressing down. And in a weak act of self-defence, Public Service…

By NLM Reporter The United Nations High Commission for Refugees marked the International Day for Refugees with a panel discussion and award ceremony at the Nairobi National Museum last month. Under the national theme ‘Include All, Empower All’ the event brought together refugees and other stakeholders in the humanitarian world with a view to finding permanent solutions to the burgeoning refugee crisis. The discussion unearthed a number of important issues, foremost being the general consensus that a resolution of the refugee problem required a shift policy from alienation and repatriation towards integration. According to Ms Tabisha Esperance, who represents refugees…

When a man thinks he has monopoly over virtue, it does not just make him cantankerous but also dangerous. As if by some switch, he will contradict everybody else with a false sense of self-importance and make every effort to impose his truth even in spheres that have nothing to do with him. Alfred Mutua is such a man. When IEBC declared him for a second time the governor of Machakos, he set about entrenching a false sense of importance that imposed an unsaid need for those seeking his help to sing his praises as one would a god. It…

Recently, the High Court granted orders overturning the suspension of IEBC chief executive Ezra Chiloba (right). If events of the past few months are anything to go by, the expectation is that, immediately upon receiving these orders, the Commission’s Chair Wafula Chebukati will reinstate Chiloba only to suspend him a few hours later. But who is this person that is so keen on seeing Chiloba out? What makes sense is that a regime keen on retaining power will also be keen on retaining the services of Chiloba who, according to some quarters, did a “perfect job”, whatever interpretation you fancy…

By Prof John Harbeson There has been growing recognition that democratisation in developing countries has receded since about 2005, for reasons still insufficiently explored, after having made steady progress to that point since the end of the Cold War. More recently, however, that trajectory has been superseded by larger events of greater consequence. It is now apparent that democratic institutions are under unprecedented stress even in the world’s oldest standing democracies, long presumed to be “mature.” Indeed, as fragile, weak, and corrupted as democratic institutions may appear to be in some sub-Saharan African democracies, one must acknowledge that some of…

By Ahmednasir Abdullahi, SC In response to untameable graft in the Uhuru administration, some have suggested a government shutdown. Properly speaking, there’s no such thing, but the anger out of which the idea is borne is justifiable. What would occasion a shutdown would be a refusal by Parliament to pass the recently tabled budget, and ours is too derisive do that: the corruption is in the budget, and that is where they thrive. State and public officers can refuse to render services if they are not paid, which would paralyse operations, hence a shutdown of services. The President can also veto…

By Dustin Homer the last mile of a shipment’s journey is inevitably the most expensive – possibly accounting for over 50% of total delivery costs, according to a 2016 report by McKinsey. Now imagine that last mile is in Africa. It may very well be a pot-holed dirt road, set in the middle of one an informal, low income area, where even a ballpark guesstimate of consumer demand is incredibly hard to come by. Many companies are already pushing their products into these emerging markets, yet most experience expensive blind spots in understanding exactly who they are reaching and where…

By Kevin Motaroki It was the doctor’s third prompt that got Morgan angry. “What do you think it is?” She was young, chewing gum, donning earphones, and dressed in tight-fitting slacks under her white doctor’s coat. She looked intelligent, with that air of someone who knows they know or should know their stuff, but an aura that said ‘my shift is about to end and I can’t wait to be out of here’ made her fidgety and unfocused. “You are the doctor here,” he blurted, unable to control himself, “I am not, therefore I come to you… Are you seriously…

Kenya’s founding father Jomo Kenyatta must have also been fluent in Russian too, to an appreciable extent. During Jomo Kenyatta’s 38th memorial service of 22nd August 2016 at Holy Family Cathedral in Nairobi, President Uhuru Kenyatta invited the Rt. Hon. Raila Odinga to say a word. Raila Odinga studied in what was then known as East Germany and still remains fluent in German. Raila Odinga spoke of a time around the year 1965, when he had come home on holiday. His father Oginga Odinga was then Kenyan Vice President. Jomo Kenyatta had visited the Odingas at their Kisumu home, and…

By Newton Arori “Application for recusal of a judge is the occupational hazard every judge must face in the course of her/his judicial career. Any judge will tell you that listening to an application for recusal and making a ruling on that application are some of the biggest challenges judges face in the course of their judicial duties. The judge is the subject of the recusal proceedings and yet he/she is expected to rise above the proceedings and determine the matter rationally” – Justice S.N. Mutuku in “Republic v Raphael Muoki Kalungu (2015) eKLR” The Black’s Law Dictionary defines recusal…