Why BBI should be renamed Miguna Reforms

Kenyan exiled lawyer Miguna Miguna boasts a diverse legacy ranging from student activism to election campaigns, public service, literary works, TV punditry, and even village botany.

Perhaps Miguna is best remembered for his tell-all book Peeling Back the Mask in which he, among other things, revealed some juicy secrets he stumbled upon while serving as an adviser to then Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

In a past column, I wrote about a stubborn weed named miguna in my village because of its choking effect on the maize crop.

Where I come from only special people are considered for such botanical nomenclature, and the man fondly known as Janyando should take his name on that weed as a badge of honour.

I believe Miguna’s contribution to the proposed constitutional reforms under the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) should be recognised in a similar manner.

President Uhuru Kenyatta has for some time now shouted himself hoarse about a constitutional moment that nobody else seems to see or feel.

Constitutional moment

Indeed the more he has publicly spoken about a constitutional moment the more he has left his audience confused. People have asked: Where is it? Why can’t we feel it? I doubt they got satisfactory answers to these questions, even as the President launched the collection of signatures for the constitutional referendum Bill last Wednesday.

But the President at least gave a hint of when he had the brainwave and who inspired it.

Explaining why he and the former prime minister agreed to a surprise truce in March 2018 after months of unrest arising from the disputed 2017 presidential election, Mr Kenyatta alluded to having received intelligence about a plot to destroy the country.

 “If there had been no Handshake, this country would have been brought to its knees by very dangerous forces – the reckless aggressiveness of some, and the triumphant, chest thumping and stone-walling by others,” he said.

It’s safe to conclude that the ‘triumphant chest thumpers’ and ‘stone-wallers’ were the anti-Handshake elements within the ruling Jubilee Party that have since banded together in the Tangatanga faction.

But the President appeared to apportion a greater blame for the threat of destruction to the radical forces within Mr Odinga’s Nasa coalition that advocated civil disobedience to protest his election victory.

 “There were even those reckless few who threatened destruction of the nation; and actually got a hearing from sections of the public that felt only drastic action could ease their frustrations,” said the President.

No prizes for guessing who and what the President had in mind. As the self-styled General of the National Resistance Movement (NRM), Nasa’s radical wing, Miguna had emerged as a force to reckon with.

His advocating tactics such as product boycotts certainly made the authorities very uncomfortable, explaining his incarceration and subsequent exiling.

But who would have known that he would inspire a whole constitutional moment for Kenya?

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