Author: NLM Correspondent

Alpha Femi Auditor General Edward Ouko is no doubt a man under siege by forces determined to clip his powers and ensure he does not have the leeway to question massive plunder, when it happens, of public funds by State and county agencies. From a move by the National Assembly to amend the Public Audit Act and a petition in Parliament to remove him from office over allegations of abuse of office, the auditor general has chose not to take things lying down, and instead fight for his independence. Unlike in similar situations where the Office of the Attorney General…

Dr Charles  Khamala Disorderly doctors display a condition whose therapy is “four walls.” On January 5, 2017, Employment and Labour Relations Court Judge Helen Wasilwa rejected a Collective Bargaining Agreement purportedly signed between the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Board Union (KPMDU) and the Health Ministry in 2013 because “it is unregistered, invalid and hence unenforceable”. Thus, the “four walls” therapy was administered on January 10, 2016 to cure their continued defiance of her return-to-work order. The first problem is that KMPDU were initially dissatisfied with the government’s failure to implement its promised 300 per cent pay hike. However,…

NLM writer For the last eight months, the seven judges of the Supreme Court of Kenya have been unable to agree upon or elect their representative to the Judicial Service Commission of Kenya (JSC). Justice Dr Smokin Wanjala, who was the court’s representative for the last five years, is seeking a second term. So far no one has formally declared an interest in running against him – even as it is revealed that virtually everyone, save for the Chief Justice wants to run – yet no elections have been held for the last eight months. Multiple sources who spoke to the…

By David Wanjala Gullible. Cheap. Short sighted. Whatever you want to call it, the adjective will fit quite nicely in describing the perennial failure of political leadership in the “Luhya Nation” to rise to the occasion when it is most crucial. Masinde Muliro and Kijana Wamalwa, the doyens of Luhya politics, are the standard. In recent times, those who have stepped into the shoes of the two fallen heroes have utterly failed the people of Mulembe big time, with their antics, almost all of the time, only succeeding in providing comic relief. There is a former Member of Parliament from…

By Kenyatta Otieno Development is a monster. It is as big as an elephant but sometimes everyone is blind to it. Everyone tries to touch it from where he is and the interpretation you get comes in many shades, depending on level of education, exposure and political persuasion. I will draw back from this elephant and look at development from the eyes of a son of a peasant with big dreams. Jubilee Government (or the as our President says, Uhuru Kenyatta’s government) has been shouting about the Standard Gauge Railway, and other infrastructural developments, as their achievement in their first…

At Kifuku, a cattle ranch in Kenya, the dry-stone walls are reminiscent of England; by the farmhouse, a pair of boats sit on an artificial lake. The farm has, however, been anything but calm of late. Since September, dozens of cattle-ranchers, some with assault rifles, have driven their cattle onto the farm’s 8,000 acres (3,238 hectares) of grass. Buildings have been wrecked, staff beaten up and a police officer shot and injured. “We’re all extremely tired and frustrated and short-fused and scared,” says Maria Dodds, the owner. By February 12, relief had arrived, in the form of an armoured car…

The rise of cyber attacks in the region can be attributed to a shortage of experts to tackle sophisticated cyber crimes. According to the Cisco Annual Cybersecurity Report, 2017, organisations are having perennial challenges fighting cyber-crimes because they are not investing enough funds to contain cyber-attacks. Small or medium enterprises in East Africa have at least one or two of their systems fully exposed on the Internet, with the internal staff unaware of the vulnerability. The majority of organisations spend less than Sh500,000 annually on cyber security while some have no budget at all and do not train their staff…

Two days will forever be etched in Amare’s mind. The first was when he finally accepted that he was gay. And the second was the day he realised that being gay could get him killed. That day his father, a gay pastor in Uganda, was shot dead for his sexual preference. “So I ran. I ran as far and a fast as I could,” he says. Amare is one of the thousands of gay refugees who have found solace in a foreign land. “Even if it means I have had to start from nothing, it is better than living in…

New UN climate chief says she’s worried about President Donald Trump – but confident that action to curb climate change is unstoppable. President Trump said he’d withdraw from the UN climate deal and stop funding the UN’s clean energy programme. But former Mexican diplomat Patricia Espinosa said that the delay in any firm announcement suggests the issue is still unresolved. ‘World will carry on’ Ms Espinosa said it would be more damaging for the US to leave the on-going climate talks process altogether than to stop funding the clean energy programme. The US pays approximately $4m (Sh400 million) towards this…

Dr Joseph Wandera When the history of Kenya’s democratisation process is written, the Anglican All Saints Cathedral – now celebrating its 100 years of existence – in the heart of Nairobi, will be part and parcel of that story. In 1963, Kenya celebrated independence from the British colonial rule. A “second independence” in the early 1990s was realised, with the return of multiparty politics, an achievement that owed much to intense clerical critique of authoritarian, corrupt, and extravagant one –party rule. During Kanu’s single party regime, there was limited scope for public discourse. The body politic was rent by surveillance,…