SECOND PRESIDENT OF KENYA, MOI HAS DIED

Second President of Kenya, Daniel Toroitich arap Moi has died

By Our Correspondent, Nairobi KENYA

Former President of Kenya, Daniel Toritich arap Moi is dead, President Uhuru Kenyatta has announced in a presidential proclamation.

He was 95 years old.

His death was confirmed by his press secretary Lee Njiru.

He passed away at night while receiving treatment at Nairobi Hospital.

President Uhuru Kenyatta issued a presidential proclamation announcing the passing on of the retired President.

Last month, doctors at the Nairobi Hospital were forced to Moi back on life support machines.

His health situation has not been stable since he was rushed to the facility in October last year. 

At the time, his spokesman Lee Njiru had said the visit was for a normal check-up but since then he has been re-admitted four times.

Moi’s medical team led by his personal doctor David Silverstein are said to be managing recurring complications that have kept him at the hospital for almost three months.

Moi (R) and his son Gideon

He had been in and out of the hospital in the past years. On his first admission to the hospital, he was treated for pleural effusion. Since his admission in October 2019, where according to his spokesman, he was admitted for an apparent check-up, he has been admitted another four times,due to recurring complications.

Moi’s health condition is compounded by a knee pain he has been nursing following an accident involving his car in 2006 in Limuru. 

He was a Kenyan politician who was the second President of Kenya from 1978 to 2002. He became president following the death of the first president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta.

Through popular agitation and external pressures, he was forced to allow multiparty elections in 1991; he led his party, KANU, to victory in the 1992 and 1997 elections.

Prior to becoming President, he served as the third Vice President of Kenya from 1967 to 1978

Moi was popularly known to Kenyans as Nyayo, a Swahili word for "footsteps", as he often said he was following in the footsteps of the first President, Jomo Kenyatta.

He also earned the sobriquet "Professor of Politics" due to his long rule of 24 years, the longest in Kenyan history to date.

At the age of 95, he was the oldest living former Kenyan president at the time of his death.

Moi chose Uhuru Kenyatta (R) as his successor instead of Raila Odinga (L)

Moi was born in Kabarak village, Sacho division, Baringo County, and was raised by his paternal uncle Kimoi Chebii following the early death of his father. He was from the Tugen sub-group of the Kalenjin people.

After completing his secondary education at Kapsabet High School, he attended Tambach Teachers Training College in the Keiyo District and worked as a teacher from 1946 until 1955.

In 1955 Moi entered politics when he was elected Member of the Legislative Council for Rift Valley. He was the chosen replacement of Dr. John ole Tameno, the former representative who had had to quit due to heavy drinking and suspected connections to the freedom movement.

In 1957 Moi was re-elected Member of the Legislative Council for Rift Valley. He became Minister of Education in the pre-independence government of 1960–1961.

In 1960 he founded the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU) with Ronald Ngala to challenge the Kenya African National Union (KANU) led by Jomo Kenyatta.

KADU pressed for a federal constitution, while KANU was in favour of centralism. The advantage lay with the numerically stronger KANU, and the British government was finally forced to remove all provisions of a federal nature from the constitution.

After Kenya gained independence on 12 December 1963, Kenyatta convinced Moi that KADU and KANU should be merged to complete the process of decolonisation.

Accordingly, KADU dissolved and joined KANU in 1964. The only real challenge to KANU's dominance came from the Kenya People's Union, starting in 1966. That party was banned in 1969, and from that point onward Kenya was a de facto one-party state dominated by the Kikuyu/Luo alliance.

However, with an eye on the fertile lands of the Rift Valley populated by members of Moi's Kalenjin tribe, Kenyatta secured their support by first promoting Moi to Minister for Home Affairs in 1964, and then to Vice-President in 1967.

Senior Private, Hezekiah Ochuka (C)

As a member of a minority tribe Moi was also an acceptable compromise for the major tribes. Moi was elected to the Kenyan parliament in 1963 from Baringo North. From 1966 until his retirement in 2002 he served as the Baringo Central MP.

However, Moi faced opposition from the Kikuyu elite known as the Kiambu Mafia, who would have preferred one of their own to be eligible for the presidency. This resulted in an attempt by the constitutional drafting group to change the constitution to prevent the vice-president automatically assuming power in the event of the president's death.

The presence of this succession mechanism might have led to dangerous political instability if Kenyatta died, given his advanced age and perennial illnesses. However, Kenyatta withstood the political pressure and safeguarded Moi's position.

When Jomo Kenyatta died on 22 August 1978, Moi became acting president. Per the Constitution, a special presidential election for the balance of Kenyatta's term was to be held on 8 November, 90 days later.

That never happened as the Cabinet held a Special Cabinet meeting without Moi and decided that no one else was interested and went around the country campaigning for him to be declared elected unopposed. He was therefore declared President of Kenya in September 1978.

Despite his popularity, Moi was still too weak to consolidate his power.

From the beginning, anticommunism was an important theme of Moi's government; speaking on the new President's behalf, Vice-President Mwai Kibaki bluntly stated, "There is no room for communists in Kenya."

On 1 August 1982, lower-level Air Force personnel, led by Senior Private Grade-I Hezekiah Ochuka and backed by university students, attempted a coup d'état to oust Moi.

The putsch was quickly suppressed by military and police forces commanded by Chief of General Staff Mahamoud Mohamed.

To this day it appears that the attempt by two independent groups to seize power contributed to the failure of both, with one group making its attempt slightly earlier than the other.

Moi took the opportunity to dismiss political opponents and consolidate his power. He reduced the influence of Kenyatta's men in the cabinet through a long running judicial enquiry that resulted in the identification of key Kenyatta men as traitors.

The main conspirators in the coup, including Ochuka were sentenced to death, marking the last judicial executions in Kenya. He appointed supporters to key roles and changed the constitution to formally make KANU the only legally permitted party in the country.

However, as mentioned above, Kenya had been a de facto one-party state since 1969. Kenya's academics and other intelligentsia did not accept this and the universities and colleges became the origin of movements that sought to introduce democratic reforms.

However, Kenyan secret police infiltrated these groups and many members moved into exile. Marxism could no longer be taught at Kenyan universities. Underground movements, e.g. Mwakenya and Pambana, were born.

Moi's regime now faced the end of the Cold War, and an economy stagnating under rising oil prices and falling prices for agricultural commodities.

At the same time the West no longer dealt with Kenya as it had in the past, when it was viewed as a strategic regional outpost against communist influences from Ethiopia and Tanzania.

At that time Kenya had received much foreign aid, and the country was accepted as well governed with Moi as a legitimate leader and firmly in charge.

Western allies deliberately overlooked the increasing degree of political repression, including the use of torture at the infamous Nyayo House torture chambers. Some of the evidence of these torture cells was eventually to be exposed in 2003 after Mwai Kibaki became President.

Half-hearted inquiries that began at the request of foreign aid donors never amounted to anything substantial during Moi's presidency.

Although it appears that the peaceful transfer of power to Mwai Kibaki may have involved an understanding that Moi would not stand trial for offences committed during his presidency, foreign aid donors reiterated their requests, and Kibaki reopened the inquiry.

As the inquiry has progressed, Moi, his two sons, Philip and Gideon (now a Senator), and his daughter, June, as well as a host of high-ranking Kenyans, have been implicated. In testimony delivered in late July 2003, Treasury Permanent Secretary Joseph Magari recounted that, in 1991, Moi ordered him to pay Ksh34.5 million ($460,000) to Goldenberg, contrary to the laws then in force.

In October 2006, Moi was found by the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes to have taken a bribe from a Pakistani businessman, to award a monopoly of duty-free shops at the country's international airports in Mombasa and Nairobi. The businessman, Ali Nasir, claimed to have paid Moi US$2 million in cash to obtain government approval for the World Duty Free Limited investment in Kenya.

On 31 August 2007, WikiLeaks published a secret report that laid bare a web of shell companies, secret trusts and frontmen that his entourage had used to funnel hundreds of millions of pounds into nearly 30 countries.

Moi was constitutionally barred from running in the 2002 presidential elections. Some of his supporters floated the idea of amending the constitution to allow him to run for a third term, but Moi preferred to retire, choosing Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of Kenya's first President, as his successor.

However, Mwai Kibaki was elected President by a two to one majority over Kenyatta, which was confirmed on 29 December 2002.

Moi handed over power in a poorly organised ceremony that had one of the largest crowds ever seen in Nairobi in attendance. The crowd was openly hostile to Moi.

After leaving office in December 2002, Moi lived in retirement, largely shunned by the political establishment. In 2005, a Scotland Yard detective, John Troon who was investigating the death of former Kenya’s Foreign Minister, Dr Robert Ouko, implicated Moi with the death.

Troon told a Parliamentary Select Committee investigating the death led by Chairman Gor Sunguh that it was President Moi who ordered the killing of his Foreign minister 15 years ago. Moi refuted the allegations as malicious gossip. - Africa