Oloo Aringo's exit rekindles Hezekiah Oyugi's powerful reign during Kanu's rule

 

When the late Oloo Aringo then Education Cabinet Minister addressed delegates during Uwezo Kenya National Conference in Kisumu. [File, Standard]

I sat quietly in a far corner of the massive living room. I watched them as they trooped in one by one, bowing down before the man seated on a large elegant chair.

Others took a bow then suddenly went onto the floor and lay prostrate. With a large, golden walking stick, he touched their heads gently and murmured some words. They rose up slowly as if in a stupor and walked to take their seats.

They came from different parts of the country. Men of power and influence. Men I had held in high regard until I saw them in their most downtrodden moment. The majority were leaders from the Luo community.

The ‘King’ of Luo Nyanza, Hezekiah Nelson Oyugi Ogango, aka ‘Kalam Maduong’ or the Big Pen, was resplendent in a black suit and red shirt, colours of the ruling party Kanu.

The ritualistic ceremony was playing itself out at his Rongo home. They walked in single file; James Okwanyo, David Okiki Amayo, Prof Ouma Muga, Kassim Owango and then Peter Castro Oloo Aringo.

There was an eerie silence as they fell in supplication one by one. I flinched, and nervously squeezed the Leo Tolstoy novel, War and Peace, in my hand. Aringo of all people? I couldn’t believe my eyes.

He bowed down before Oyugi to show his respect then Lo and behold, scrambled onto his fours and was soon lying on his stomach. He struggled to get up as the sheer size of his belly stood in his way. 

I was thoroughly embarrassed on behalf of these men in expensive suits.

Many years later I raised the issue with Oloo Aringo, then minister for education at his Alego Usonga home.

I wanted to know how and why he could stoop so low inside another man’s living room: “Bwana Atemi, it is easy to judge me harshly if you don’t know the intricate workings of the ruling party Kanu and who Oyugi was.

“Like his nickname, Big Pen, he made and destroyed careers and people’s lives. At times we were forced to do and say the most embarrassing things for our own survival and for the safety of our families. There are many men before me whose lives and businesses were destroyed and we buried them.”

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Luo leaders had to choose; to be in opposition behind former Vice President Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and remain in perpetual penury or bend over to the King and giver of power and have access to money, the President and state largesse.

Aringo, Okwanyo and Amayo therefore chose the comfort that sycophancy would earn them.  

President Daniel arap Moi, just like his predecessor Jomo Kenyatta, enjoyed absolute power. He used divide and rule techniques to reward and punish friends and foe.

To keep Odinga’s power in check, Moi built an alternative power base in South Nyanza revolving around Oyugi. Through Oyugi’s patronage, prominent politicians among them; James Okwanyo, Dalmas Otieno, Peter Nyakiamo, David Okiki Amayo and Prof Ouma Muga, emerged.

Moi had a unique style of leadership. He created several power bases to put his detractors in check. He would appoint men and women from across Kenya to powerful ministerial positions but place his inner men as their PSs to put them into checkmate.

His critics would only see the political nincompoops without realising there were brilliant others in charge.

Loyalty to president

His regime produced men like Aringo, who the late Anglican Bishop John Henry Okullu described as; “A Court Poet and Master of Platitudes”.

Most of these men would have walked naked to prove they were more loyal to the President and the ruling party than their rivals.

In their excessive loyalty shows and contests they destroyed the careers of others. Kariuki Chotara, Shariff Nassir, Joseph Kamotho, Justus Ole Tipis, Ezekiel Bargetuny, Mulu Mutisyia, David Okiki Amayo and Hezekiah Oyugi emerged as powerful figures in the Moi era. Hezekiah Oyugi was Head of Internal Security in the late 1980s to early 1990s.

He was so powerful and dreaded that the former commissioner of police the late Philip Kilonzo would answer his calls while standing and constantly saluting.

Scotland Yard detective John H.B Troon told the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the Robert Ouko murder that he was in Kilonzo’s office when his direct phone rang. “The police boss shot up from his seat and kept shouting ‘Yes Sir’ while vigorously saluting the unseen caller. When I learned that he was talking to Mr Oyugi, I knew Oyugi must be a very powerful man.”

READ: Former Education Minister Peter Oloo Aringo dead

Oyugi and Energy Minister Nicholas Biwott were named as “principal suspects” in the Ouko murder. They were arrested but freed after two weeks for lack of evidence.

Rongo town

On November 26 1991, Oyugi was set to testify at the Ouko Commission of Inquiry sitting at the Kisumu Town Hall. Moi dissolved the commission and asked the police to take over the investigation. Oyugi was detained for 13 days at the General Service Unit headquarters. He died on August 8 1992.

Oyugi’s relationship with Moi started in 1982. During the 1982 coup attempt, Moi found himself cornered at his Kabarak home.

He was in the company of a few loyalists among them Rift Valley Provincial Commissioner Hezekiah Oyugi. Oyugi told Moi; “I will die with you, Mzee. I am not going anywhere.”

Moi’s biographer Andrew Morton says; “Moi then facing the possibility of death, was deeply impressed by the expression of loyalty, a gesture which would have profound influence on the future of governance of the country.”

In 1986, Moi appointed Oyugi PS in the Office of the President in charge of Provincial Administration and Internal Security. He gave him an office at State House. People in his Rongo home nicknamed him ‘The Governor’ or ‘Big Pen’.

Charles Hornsby in his book, Kenya, A History Since Independence, says: “For five years, Mr Oyugi ruled Nyanza, making the careers of Luo politicians such as John Okwanyo, Dalmas Otieno and Job Omino, and his home area of Rongo boomed into a modern town.”

Oyugi formed his own Special District Officers (DOs), to gather intelligence on leaders suspected to be anti Nyayo.

Another Homa Bay legend has it that in the 1980s, while strolling on his farm, Oyugi had an encounter with a goat which spoke to him. He was then PC Rift Valley.

The goat wanted him to deliver a prophetic message to President Moi that the country should build a grain reserve to avoid famine and disaster. Moi is said to have heeded the warning. This in turn elevated Oyugi to the status of a Biblical Joseph.

With the Oyugi story in mind, I keenly listened to Aringo. His explanation made sense to anyone who understood political power in the context of the Cold War history and single-party rule. Aringo reminded me of those who had fallen for contesting or fighting the government and the ruling party.

He reminded me of the dreaded power that Okiki Amayo once wielded as chairman of the Kanu Disciplinary Committee.

Being summoned by the committee drove men into fear and terror. The sessions before the committee left many trembling and in tears.

Politicians were summoned over petty issues ranging from failure to clap for the president, laugh at his jokes or even failure to remove a cap as a show of respect for top Kanu leadership.

Aringo recalled the beads of sweat, which became beads of shame that formed on his furrowed brow when he listened to junior airport employees discussing his death.

The harrowing airport experience froze him in his tracks. His ears twitched and his legs trembled. He listened keenly to the two cleaners moping the floor in the VIP section of the Jomo Kenyatta International airport.

He couldn’t believe they were loudly and boldly talking about him in his presence. He even feigned a loud cough to try and interrupt their conversation.

“God is very unfair” said one of the cleaners in Dholuo: “Why didn’t he take this one. It was unfair for such a good man like Robert Ouko to die when an idiot like this one is roaming around”. The insensitivity, cruelty and recklessness of the words hit Aringo like a sledgehammer. The two cleaners let out a devilish laughter and contemptuously sauntered away. Kenya was burning. Violent riots and demonstrations swept through the country.

The minister for foreign affairs Dr Robert John Ouko had been assassinated and his smoldering remains dumped a few kilometers from his Koru home. Angry Kenyans were protesting his killing.

When Ouko died, Aringo was on official duty in the United Kingdom. The February 1990 murder, shook to the core the government of President Moi.    

Aringo looked at me, his teary eyes heavy with sadness: “That encounter haunted me for months. I was traumatised by the fact that ordinary people could think of me in such a demeaning way and even dare say it to my face. I have never felt so small and useless.”

Deep down however, the humiliation of me watching him sprawled on his big belly at Oyugi’s feet cut through him like a dagger. As we sipped tea on the verandah of his home in Alego Usonga in 1992, moments before he defected from Kanu, Aringo opened up to the humiliation politicians endured to stay politically and economically alive. In 1992, multiparty politics liberated many from the claws of the single party rule.

Aringo was a great source of news, having served as MP for Alego Usonga since 1974, as minister for education and national chairman of Kanu. He told a rally in Nyandorera, Siaya County: “I will soon leave the ruling party Kanu. It is a great party that has been our mother and father but sadly the hour has come for us to part ways. However, I must first consult my ancestors.”   

I smiled as I took my notes. I was covering one of Kenya’s greatest orators who had been forced by circumstances to turn into a sycophant and Kanu’s cheerleader. Aringo shared the high and low moments as a cabinet minister and powerful chairman of Kanu.

By the time Ouko died, Aringo, like Oyugi, was drunk with power. The rotund minister was driven by sycophancy and imagined himself immortal until he had his airport moment.

Loyalty to the President was everything. Former Kitui Senator David Musila learned the hard way when he refused to play ball with Mulu Mutisya. He says in his memoir, Seasons of Hope, that: “A word in the president’s ear or just a hint from them was enough to either build or destroy a political career.”

“President Moi was once a very good friend of mine; but now here I was looking over my shoulder, pondering the turn of events… After the relationship between President Moi and me took a dramatic nosedive, I was left wounded and confused. I did not understand what had gone wrong.” Mulu Mutisya had whispered some negative sentiments about Musila into Moi’s ear and thus ended the friendship.

Aringo had grown in reputation to the mystic Russian, Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, who befriended the imperial family of Nicholas II, the last emperor of Russia. Like Rasputin,

Aringo slowly gained massive influence in the government and ruling party Kanu. Rasputin’s extensive powerful influence on the ruling family infuriated the nobles, the church and even peasants.  But Aringo’s power extended from Oyugi’s golden stick.

Aringo’s most enduring sycophantic moment was during a graduation ceremony at the University of Nairobi. While inviting Moi to preside over the event, Aringo, as the minister for education, heaped so much praise on him that he referred to him as “The Prince of Peace.” Moi was quick to admonish him. He told him never to equate him to “Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Saviour.”

Power fades

I shared my encounter with Oyugi with Aringo. I met Oyugi a few months before his demise at a public rally in Nyakach. Moi had come to address the rally after politically instigated violence spewed out of control. Nyakach MP Ojwang Kombudo had threatened to tear off his clothes in parliament to protest the killing of his people.

He issued the threat at the burial of a police boss in Nyakach who had been killed in the clashes. In a dramatic show of how he would execute his parliamentary threat, the MP removed his shoe and used it to bang the casket of the deceased in anger.

My story on his fury was a splash in the Sunday Nation. During the Monday rally, he denied issuing such utterances and accused me of fabricating the story.

When Moi stood up to speak, he turned towards me and said, “Kijana wa Nation hebu njoo hapa” I quickly walked to the dais.

Moi pointed at the MP then asked me if there was any truth in the story that I wrote. “Yes, your Excellency I wrote the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” I responded, my pen and notebook in my hand.

“In that case let everyone carry his own cross” Moi said and asked me to return to my seat. He had already confirmed from intelligence reports that the story was accurate. I returned back to my seat next to a very unlikely neighbour, Hezekiah Oyugi. He looked frail and tired.

“Mr Atemi you are lucky you can see the President. I’ve been trying to meet him since my release from the police cells but his handlers have frustrated me,” Oyugi told me.

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He had grown so thin that I doubt if Moi had noticed him when he looked in my direction. After the rally we sat down for about 45 minutes. He seemed eager to get something off his heart.

Oyugi looked at me, his deep-set eyes piercing into my soul. The last time I had been to his office, he was a flamboyant, smartly dressed man. Today, he resembled a man in rags and walked with a limp.

“As you see me now, I am a dying man. I am dying slowly and painfully” he broke the silence.

I listened keenly but quietly without interrupting him. He narrated to me his ordeal in the hands of the dreaded Special Branch who once reported to him.

On the day he was set to testify at the Ouko Commission of Inquiry, he was arrested and taken to Kilimani police station.

“I had wanted to tell the truth. I wanted to remove the load off my shoulders. I wanted the world to know everything I knew about the Ouko murder. But I was arrested instead.

“They kept me for long hours without water or food. Eventually, I requested for a soft drink. They brought me a bottle of Sprite. I only remember taking the first sip. It must have been several days later when I woke up. There were some itchy scratch marks on my neck. Since then, I have never been the same. I became sickly and was later diagnosed with the Motor Neuron Disease. I don’t know what they injected me with,” he said.

I wanted to ask him if he regrets playing God with men kneeling before him. I wanted to know what the golden stick symbolised. I wanted to ask him what he deeply regrets in his life. But I realised how inappropriate and cruel such questions would have been under the circumstances.

I have never forgotten the painful look on his face as he walked away. A few months later I was reporting his death and covering his burial.

This is the powerful man in whose Rongo home, a villa was established just for the head of state. It is here that leaders would lay prostrate as he listened to their petitions.

He would bless them and with the wave of the hand, or touch them with the golden stick then ask them to stand up. Many would leave with envelopes of money. He died a lonely man. 

Now both Oyugi, the power giver and Aringo, the power bearer, are with their forebearers, Gone with the Wind without an iota of power.