Author: NLM Correspondent

By Henry Munene In a new tell-all book, a former Kenyan electoral agency official explains how, in 2002, he was forced to drop his decision to contest a seat that Kenya’s second President Daniel arap Moi had held for more than three decades. Thomas Letangule claims his decision to vie for the Baringo Central parliamentary seat in 2002 attracted threats, arm-twisting and warnings conveyed through operatives of the then ruling party, Kanu. In Trailblazer, Letangule claims state machinery was deployed to ensure Moi’s son, Gideon, who wants to run for president in 2022, would clinch the seat previously held by…

By Shadrack Muyesu The failure of public literati to locate the mismatch between our government system and socio-economic identity as the root cause of our governance problems is one that irks me. That we will have a better country if we simply changed our mentality and/or elected better leaders is an idea I find objectionable as it does answer why this shift in mentality has been so hard to come by or why, rather than punish bad leadership, we appear to embrace it. Yet this idea persists. In one way, on the face of it at least, it forms the…

The political environment in Kenya is very dicey. The UhuRuto presidency locked out a big chunk of Raila supporters from power, which in Kenya means resources as well. Between 2013 and this year, Kenya was more divided than it had ever been, and it is only Raila’s wisdom over his supporters – who had begun talk about secession – that held the country in place. Efforts to bring Raila closer to power culminated into the ‘handshake’ whose primary objective, we are told, is to unite the country. Meanwhile, it has given birth to another headache: how to handle the volatile…

Trump ends separation policy but ‘not sorry’ After days of outrage from politicians, families and international agencies, US President Donald Trump finally ended, by executive order, his abhorrent policy of separating young children from their parents. For months, the government had pursued a policy of separating children, including infants, at border points in what is says was an effort to discourage unregistered immigrants from entering the US. At the same time, the US pulled out of the United Nations Human Rights Council, which it termed as a “cesspool of political bias”, and a “hypocritical” body that “makes a mockery of…

Many think Okiya Omtatah is a lawyer. Well, he is not. Born in Busia County on November 30, 1964, Omtatah schooled attended St. Pauls’ Secondary School for Form 1 and 2. It is there that he met a missionary priest who greatly influenced his convictions, which have lasted to date. He later joined St. Peters School in Mukumu in 1981 for his Form 3 and 4 where he did and passed his O and A levels graduating in 1983. He secured admission at University of Nairobi for a Bachelor of Commerce degree but changed his mind and joined St. Augustine…

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…