When President Uhuru Kenyatta nominated Rashid ‘Achesa’ as Sports and Heritage Secretary, the initial reaction, even within the Mulembe nation, was, “Who is that?”
It was a legitimate question, for the name Achesa does not exist in the Luhya lingua. What they have is ‘Echesa’, meaning one born during the harvest season. How jealous the ‘small’ Luhya sub-tribes were and livid that the son of Wanga had harvested leadership back to the rightful owners!
See, the Wanga have not tasted power since the demise of their fabled King Nabongo Mumia in 1945.
The best they ever got was nusu mkate in the perennial assistant minister, Dr Elon Willis Wameyo, who, despite being Kenya’s first gynaecologist, and a Makerere University graduate to boot, never straddled a full ministerial docket.
Instead, it’s always been ‘small’ sub-tribes like the Bukusu, Maragoli and Abanyala driving around with bendera, while the Wanga, the real owners of power, salivated from the fence like stray mongrels at a big man’s funeral.
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No wonder, the jealousy that ensued when Jubilee corrected this historical injustice could have flattened a highrise building squatting on riparian land.
The confusion surrounding his appointment was, however, not limited to the name. Was he a university graduate? Was he a former KDF officer and boxer? Where was his CV?
By the time Echesa was swatting away pesky MPs questioning his capabilities, none of these was clear.
Instead, social media was awash with fake news: Ooh, Rashid Echesa never made it past primary school; Ooh, he is a violent man, an enforcer for political warlords seeking a slice of the elusive Luhya unity; Ooh, he was never in the army…
Poor child
Propaganda, all of it – trash!
This, by the way, is what happens when a poor child raises himself by the bootstraps and becomes rich.
“He must be Illuminati, a devil worshipper, and a thief,” the ones whose high school lockers resembled mini-supermarkets, but now fight bedbugs in Huruma, jobless after bagging three degrees, complain.
They forget that Kenya is awash with hustlers who were born dirt poor, but made it big by stealing, er sorry, selling this chicken, or that!
They forget that in the big scheme of things, an education is what a street fighter acquires in the streets, not the meaningless drivel broke lecturers (who only see a million when they are handed retirement benefits) dictate to stoned comrades at the university. Speaking of stoning, each time someone is stoned in Mumias town or its environs, they blame Echesa.
When youths rioted in 2007 and chased “outsiders” from Mumias after the disputed poll, they said Echesa, then ODM national youth chairman, was to blame. When rowdy youth stoned Opposition leader Raila Odinga’s car in Shibale, Mumias, it is Echesa who was blamed. When Kakamega Senator Cleophas Malala is roughed up in Mumias, they blame Echesa. Even when guns are stolen from a police post in Mumias and the real thieves are shot dead, people still want to blame Echesa.
It is always Rashid Echesa did this, Rashid Echesa did that. If this man is so evil, why has he never been arrested? If it is true that Echesa is a gangster, of course the National Intelligence Service (NIS), who sniff the wind when you break it, would have a fat file on him. Or do they? And you think President Kenyatta would have ignored their advice and hired a goon? Because his political detractors have nothing on him, they keep bringing up that nonsense about Echesa not having gone to school.
Well, Nabongo Mumia, who ruled swathes of land from Naivasha to parts of Western Uganda never stepped inside a classroom. Did that stop him from being an able ruler? What’s wrong if the former minister inherited these noble traits from his clansman?
Indeed, the very ministry where Echesa was meant to jump-start after years of neglect by educated people was once headed by Maina Kamanda, a competent political leader and manager who is nonetheless only familiar with degrees centigrade. Why didn’t his appointment merit this senseless uproar?
Not that running Sports in Kenya is rocket science. Whether that Ministry is headed by Prof Yash Pal Ghai or a ghost worker, Kalenjin athletes will always run, Harambee Stars will always lose, and some sports official will always steal national team uniforms for his empty-headed girlfriend.
And of what use are national archives and libraries in a country where nobody reads anyway?
As for Raila Odinga not being Echesa’s equal, the facts are clear. Joshua had to flee to East Germany and Uganda (on a leaky boat), collaborate with coup plotters and get detained and teargassed to become Energy Minister at the elderly age of 56.
The youthful Rashid Echesa became CS without all these gymnastics. At the time of his appointment, it looked like this was a pointer to greater things to come. Sadly, unlike Raila, he does not have nine lives. And his one shot to fame has been gobbled up by his enemies... real or otherwise.
