Author: NLM Correspondent

By Kevin Motaroki “A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the equality of his actions and the integrity of his intentt” — Douglas MacArthur When former National Assembly Speaker Kenneth Marende was sworn in as speaker in March 2008, he stopped all pretences at party allegiances and set out to prefect the entirety of the National Assembly. If a member of his former party ODM misbehaved in the House,…

By Jane Wachira The concept of refugees dates back to the First and Second World Wars. Major incidents leading to mass displacement include the end of the colonial and the post-Cold War eras (46.5 million people), the partition of India and Pakistani, the civil conflicts of Angola, Congo, and the Rwanda-Burundi genocide. In the 21st century, at least 22.9 million people have been displaced. Incidents motivating mass movement include the secession of South Sudan from The Sudan, civil conflict in Burundi and Burkina Faso, insurgency in Nigeria and the invasion of Iraq by the US. At the helm of it…

By Newton Arori Late last year, the Supreme Court of Kenya ruled that no legal document becomes invalid only by dint of it having been prepared by an advocate who, at the time of writing, was not holding a current practising certificate. More importantly, the court appealed to Parliament to resolve apparent ambiguities in the Advocates Act as regards legal documents prepared by an advocate who does not hold a practicing certificate. Parliament is yet to make any such amends. The aim of this article is to critically review the ratio decidendi of the Supreme Court in the case in…

By Kelly Malenya “It is my duty to see the Laws executed; to permit them to be trampled upon with impunity would be repugnant to it” – The first President of the United States of America, George Washington in a letter to Alexander Hamilton in September 7, 1792 At the level of abstraction, the President of the Republic of Kenya H.E. Uhuru Kenyatta is, in a manner of speaking, the most powerful state officer in the Republic of Kenya. One may actually be excused if they were to observe that he is the most powerful person in the state of…

By Daniel Benson Kaaya “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we have been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We are no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we have been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you will almost never get it back” – Carl Sagan Amongst the oodles of challenges Africa as a continent faces is corruption and unscrupulous governance—if we have any to boast about. Weight will…

By Kenyatta Otieno Thanks to Julian Assange, the brains behind WikiLeaks, the world got to know that diplomacy is not just about wining and dining with the high and mighty. It is also about spying. The website publishes diplomatic cable leaks mainly of US ambassadors’ reports to the State Department. The revelations were intriguing and shocking in equal measure. The USA had no option but to apologise in advance to world leaders when they realised they could not prevent the leaking of classified reports. The detailed profiling of our political leaders by US Embassy in Nairobi was rather chilling… like…

By Elvis Abenga It is a trite principle of criminal law that one is innocent until and unless proven guilty by a competent court of law. This principle is derived generally from Middle Ages Europe where the ancient common law courts developed the principle “Ei incumbit probatio, qui dicit, non qui negat; cum per rerum naturam factum negantis probatio nulla sit”, which means that the proof lies on him who affirms and not upon him who denies; by the nature of things, he who denies a fact cannot produce any proof. This principle was later codified and given the status…

By Kenyatta Otieno The path of least resistance has never given us a straight river. Like our approach in many sectors in Kenya, our fear of confronting challenges, a desire to make a quick buck, unsatisfied desire for land, struggle to stop paying rent and ineffective governments all combine to give us the crooked river that is our urban centres. On a recent trip to Syokimau, I remembered another I made to the same place last year at the height of El-Nino rains, when most of the roads were impassable. It was easier to make way through the graded section…

By Paul Ogemba German dictator Adolf Hitler, widely blamed for starting World War Two, once said that the best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny… reductions. In this way the people will not see those rights and freedoms being taken until they are past that point where those changes cannot be reversed. The authenticity of this attribution to Hitler has been the subject of debate, but there is no denying that that statement perhaps summarises the piecemeal…

By Nadrat Mazrui Nubians in Kenya descended from the Nuba mountains, found in what is current day central Sudan, and were forcibly conscripted into the colonial British army in the early 1900s when Sudan was under British rule. Allegedly, upon demolishment of the army, although the Nubians requested to be returned to Sudan, the colonial government at the time refused and forced them to remain in Kenya. The British colonial authorities allocated land for the Nubians in the settlement known as Kibera or Kibra in Nairobi but did not grant them British citizenship. At Kenya’s independence, the citizenship status of…