Author: NLM Correspondent

When three IEBC commissioners resigned last month on account of what they termed as incompetence and lack of leadership from Chair Wafula Chebukati, a series of events happened in quick succession. Commission chief executive Ezra Chiloba had just been sent on compulsory leave – ostensibly Connie Maina, Margaret Mwachanya and Paul Kurgat resigned in solidarity with the CEO. Soon after, the security detail of the remaining commissioners, including the Chair was withdrawn for inexplicable reasons, to be quietly reinstated a few days later. Our source at the Harambee House intimates that the resignation of the three, a well-orchestrated move meant…

A local bank with operations in over twenty countries lost hundreds of millions of shillings in ensuing confusion after changing its core banking system eight years ago. The financial institution’s move to improve its internal control system instead resulted in massive fraud, with millions of shillings paid by clients as tax for over five years disappearing without a trace. Over five thousand clients remain unaware of the status of their tax positions during that period, although several people have been prosecuted for theft of the millions of shillings from the bank. The confusion caused an accumulation of unclaimed funds amounting to…

By John Harbeson For all its central importance to Africa’s modern political history, especially from the mid-19th Century to the present, the Horn of Africa has seemed rarely to get the kind of in-depth treatment – and I would add healing it has deserved – and needs more than ever right now. The current and still unpredictable course of change in Ethiopia makes in-depth policy and scholarly understanding of the region’s requirements urgent, for they inescapably impact each of her neighbours, notably the thousands of Ethiopians who have fled across the border at Moyale into Kenya, sparked initially by a…

BY Ahmednasir Abdullahi It is easy to associate the ongoing Executive-Judiciary war with Uhuru Kenyatta’s promise to “revisit”, upon his contested re-election. The truth, however, is that the standoff is merely symptomatic of a great malady. More than anything, it brings into question the efficacy of Liberal Democracy as a system of government. That politicians are suddenly alive to their diminished roles is also testament of a country that did not internalise the Constitution it overwhelmingly voted for. It may seem a harsh indictment, but how else does one explain Wanjiku’s lethargy in punishing errant politicians? Similarly, what would be…

The Luo have a saying – “waiting for rain that has refused to fall” – to caution against waiting in vain. Raila Odinga has become the rain that builds up heavy clouds, forces people to return everything into the house in anticipation of a heavy downpour then a strong winds come and send the clouds away.  The man who has a larger than life stature in Kenyan politics has become a case of “too close yet too far” in his quest to capture the presidency. One thing that has been Raila’s biggest undoing is his poor man-management. The fact that…

Arkan Uddin Yasin March 9, 2018. We all sat there, in disbelief and consternation. Could anyone be so cold? So unfeeling? So without compunction? “No man, for any considerable period of time can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true” – Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter Sitting there watching, listening to the speeches, there was a buzz in my head that could not let me make out what they were saying. It did not matter. It was the return of the prodigal dhampir; it was watching…

By Ahmednasir Abdullahi What a gesture it was! Out of the blue, and to the bewilderment of citizens, President Uhuru Kenyatta and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, on March 9, calmly announced that they had reached a political truce and shook hands. Of course, they were technically not at war! Neither, were the two leaders locked in a zero-sum legal dispute in any sense of the term. Indeed, they had not informed the country that there were ongoing negotiations between the two with a view to reaching a settlement. In fact, Raila has subsequently taken so much pride in the…

George Omuholo An apocryphal narrative from family sources recalls the day that an incensed Raila Odinga abandoned his three siblings in a car on Ngong Road, Nairobi in the 1970s. He had only recently returned from training in East Germany and had taken up a job at the University of Nairobi. His elder brother, Oburu Oginga, was then an elected councilor in Kisumu Municipal Council. Their two sisters, Beryl and Akinyi Wenwa Odinga, were in high school. The family matriarch, Mama Mary Odinga, was striving with the role of both father and mother while their father, Jaramogi Ajuma Oginga Odinga,…

Surely you’ve noticed it: Over the last few decades, throughout the developed world, stuff has gotten cheaper – cars, shrimp, and toothpaste. This is to be expected in an era defined by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organisation. The point of free trade agreements is to make goods as cheap as possible. Well. Not all things. Some things—drugs and medical devices, for instance—haven’t gotten cheaper at all. That’s because most free trade agreements don’t actually make trade more free. Instead, they protect companies in industries like pharmaceuticals and tech. The result is that US…

Irene Njoroge Women are like tea bags; you never know how strong they are until they’re in hot water. Those were words from Eleanor Roosevelt, a wife to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the US, from 1933 to 1945. The truthfulness of this statement resonates well with women writers, for who many do not realise just how tenacious and strong they are until they read what they have to say – in literature. The continent is blessed with writers whose works have had an influence on Africans as well as people from other races across the globe. The…