NYS was once a globally admired and model youth engagement programme

President Jomo Kenyatta receiving NYS emblem gift in Mtongwe Mombasa SEPT 1969

As inevitably as a moth helplessly gravitates towards light, the National Youth Service (NYS) has always attracted politicians and controversy from the day of its inception.

The paramilitary unit which has been transformed into a cash cow by well-connected entrepreneurs and conniving technocrats has always been irresistible to politicians.

In 1964, the year it was formed, some of the pioneer leaders tested NYS’s susceptibility to power mongers and influence peddlers.  

One of the first attempts was by a flamboyant former journalist-turned-politician, Paul Ngei, who had grand plans for a rally he had scheduled in Machakos. 

He was salivating at the prospects of awing his supporters and detractors by using some of the 1,200 NYS servicemen to make his rally colourful. But there was a problem.

However, it would take a lot of guts to deny Ngei. 

NYS recruits during Madaraka day celebrations JUNE 1966.

How could a government functionary tell off the abrasive politician, who feared nobody? In September 1964, memories were still fresh of how the former journalist had put his life on the line to save Mzee Jomo Kenyatta from being strangled by a convicted murderer who had been recruited by other political prisoners.

During an altercation between Kenyatta and the cantankerous Kariuki Chotara in Lodwar, the former had tried to eliminate Kenyatta.

Chotara, so goes the story, was hell-bent on killing Kenyatta and had Ngei and some prison warders not intervened, the grand old man would have died in prison.

This, some observers argue, is how Ngei earned his stripes in politics and automatic membership in Kenyatta’s inner sanctum, elevating him into an untouchable.

Leader of NYS J.M. Kariuki [second right] talking to NYS servicemen at seven fork road Machakos SEPT 1966.

His friendship with Kenyatta was demonstrated when the head of State caused the Constitution to be changed so that he could pardon his friend Ngei who had been found guilty of theft and locked out of elective politics.

Back to NYS. In December 1964, Ngei was fairly popular and influential as a powerful minister in charge of Cooperative Development and a close Kenyatta ally.

Ngei wanted his rally to be memorable and asked the Ministry of Labour to dispatch a bunch of servicemen from the NYS to assist in crowd control.

The Permanent Secretary did not know how to deal with the demand because he knew Kenyatta, who at the time was Prime Minister, had already pronounced himself on the subject.

Paul Ngei minister for housing in his office.

Field units

As the PS would later explain, Kenyatta had forbidden the use of NYS servicemen in crowd control in political rallies. He was also opposed to the deployment of the men in duties that would put them in conflict with other disciplined forces.

The PS was pressed between a rock and a hard place. It was also unheard off to say no to the mercurial Ngei, who was reputed to have slapped the daylights out of a white administrator in 1952 shortly before he was arrested, tried and jailed.

The day was however saved by an equally colourful politician, JM Kariuki, who at the time was Nyandarua North MP and doubled as Kanu National Youth Leader.

When the matter was brought to his attention, JM wrote a letter on December 18, 1964 and directed that owing to the urgency of the matter, the letter be hand delivered to Ngei.

“It is not our intention to use servicemen on duties other than those which are national in character. I would like to let you know that it will not be possible to to provide any servicemen for your need,” read the letter.

According to JM, the service was in a crucial stage of setting up new field units for its expansion.

“By the date of the rally, many Nairobi servicemen will have left on posting to other parts of Kenya and you will bear with me. I hope that from morale point of view, it’s not advisable to bring out a raw bunch of servicemen who have just been enlisted and not sufficiently trained,” JM wrote.

For once, Ngei was silenced. But he was not the first to seek to use the services of the paramilitary unit.

Earlier, in November of the same year, King’ori Wamburi, the general secretary of Kanu, had made a request to the NYS director 

King’ori, like Ngei, wanted the servicemen to grace a rally he was planning in Nyeri and which Kenyatta had been invited to.

The rally was to be held on November 19, and King’ori was leaving nothing to chance. By invoking Jomo’s name, he hoped to move mountains at NYS headquarters.

The reply to his letter was brief and to the point. Writing on behalf of the director of NYS, Geoffrey Griffin, E A Tongoi responded that the servicemen would not be available. Tongoi had also been briefed that Kenyatta would not be attending the rally at Ruringu’u stadium.

But it was with Ngei that the NYS had unwittingly drafted a standard response whenever politicians tried to use the youth in their political rallies.   

Age of innocence

NYS was created in 1964 in attempt by the government to absorb thousands of youths who had been involved in pre-colonial political activism, some in the armed struggle against the colonial government.

At inception, NYS was conceived to be a disciplined force under the Kenyan Constitution and was supposed to be run as the police or the prison services.

Unlike the other disciplined forces, NYS recruits, who were aged between 16 and 30, were supposed to offer voluntary services and could not be charged in a court of law for desertion.

The youths recruited in 1964 were supposed to draw a monthly stipend of Sh20, out of which Sh8 was compulsorily saved and was to be disbursed to the serviceman at the end of the two-year course.

To deter recruits from deserting the service, those who opted out before the training ended were to forfeit their savings.

During this age of innocence, NYS was involved in many projects. 

Even then, NYS was in the news but for the right reasons.

So successful was the programme that a German organisation, Signal Vertag Hans Frevert, wrote to the government seeking to understand how NYS worked.

During this time, NYS headquarters accounted for every cent collected from the public. In one instance, the PS was at pains to account for some money collected from the sale of Christmas cards.

“A stack of Christmas cards was produced in support of charitable organisations in Starehe Boys Centre, which was also led by Mr Griffin, the NYS director. The commandant of Nairobi field bought Sh25 cards and envelopes. Proceeds were forwarded,” the PS wrote in a circular dated September 11, 1965.

That age of innocence is long gone, and politicians have learnt to make their own armies for their needs. The mighty and powerful have devised ways to circumvent procurement rules to mint billions from the organisation.  

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