The real governors revisited

The pith helmet, one of the symbols of the provincial administration, is as colonial as the origins of the authority of provincial and district commissioners and chiefs. The helmet was originally a product of colonial misconception.

Apparently it was thought that a fleeting exposure to the tropical sun would pulverise the whiteman’s brains. Travel books and magazines advised white people in the colony not to venture outdoors without the head cover.

Harold Macmillan’s wind of change would blow the settler and colonial administrator from Kenya, but not the helmet and the swagger cane. Rather, they lingered on as symbol of authority, this time in the hands of the free African.

But now, all indications are that the independence era provincial administrator could be on his way out, with his power and its trappings going to the county governor. It is an epoch the new Constitution is to relegate to the annals of history.

But who can forget the men who wielded the authority of that office, the men who were the eyes, ears, and hands of the imperial presidency of that era?

Eliud Mahihu, the powerful Coast provincial commissioner was the last high-ranking official to speak to President Jomo Kenyatta before his death on August 22, 1978.

Speaking to the Daily Nation years later, Mahihu, who died in 2008, remembered the presidential motorcade snaking its way to Msambweni Primary School and a president struggling to wave to the crowds.

The old man had been struggling with ill health and the Coast PC was under strict instructions to keep him under strict, but discreet surveillance, with an entire emergency medical team in tow.

When Mahihu found that Kenyatta had collapsed on a toilet seat midway through the Msambweni function, delivering the news in a manner that wouldn’t create panic and anxiety among those who were present and the nation was his biggest challenge.

The PC alerted the then head of the presidential escort, Mr Bernard Njinu (later to become police commissioner), who swiftly organised a hurried return to State House, Mombasa, as the PC terminated the function in a calm manner.

“Those who were not supposed to know didn’t get a hint of what had happened even as I hastily ended the event,” Mahihu recalled.

Even after the president was rushed back to State House, the loyal administrator was still in the thick of things.

“Mr Mahihu rushed downstairs to pick up another oxygen cylinder that had been brought from the Aga Khan Hospital, but on getting back upstairs, the three doctors gave him a blank stare and told him they may not have much use for the oxygen. The president was dead,” reported the Daily Nation in a recent story.

Although Mahihu is credited with saving the nation from chaos by handling the president’s death diligently, he is adversely mentioned in the Ndung’u report and the ‘Seeds of Discord,’ a series of articles serialised by the Daily Nation and the Business Daily explaining post-independence land scams.

A man of immense means, Mahihu was associated with a hotel chain and swathes of waterfront properties at the coast.

Seven years after independence Eliud Mahihu was given the sole authority by President Kenyatta to issue beach plots at the Coast. So powerful was Mahihu that all that during post independence Kenya the only thing one needed was the PC’s signature, and evidence that you had paid the statutory rates.

But if Mahihu had his moments with the founding father, Mr Simeon Nyachae, now a retired politician and a wealthy investor associated with the Kabansora group of companies, definitely had his share of the pressures and pleasures that came with being a provincial commissioner in Kenyatta’s regime.

Nyachae was involved in the funeral arrangements and burial of both Mr Tom Mboya and Mr Josiah Mwangi Kariuki (popularly known as JM), two prominent politicians whose assassinations threatened to tear Kenya apart. Mboya was shot in broad daylight in Nairobi in 1969 while JM was murdered and his body dumped at Ngong Hills in 1975.

“There was a lot of bitterness at the time in the province and, indeed, a song, Maai ni Maruru (the waters are bitter), was composed,” says Nyachae who unsuccessfully contested the presidency in 2002.

The song implied that the government, which was supposed to be protector, was now killing the citizens.

To contain the situation, Nyachae invoked the Chief’s Authority Act to ban the song. He narrates how he handled the news of JM’s death in his capacity as Central PC in his book Walking Through the Corridors of Service, An Autobiography.

Due to tension in the province, prominent government officials shied away from reading President Kenyatta’s speech at the popular politician’s burial. Being the senior-most administrator there, Nyachae was picked to take the heat.

“I knew Dr Julius Kiano and Mr Jeremiah Nyagah were asked and they declined. Mr Geoffrey Kareithi, who was the head of the public service, called me and said they had found it difficult to find a minister to send. Therefore, I was required to read the speech and, being the president’s representative in the region, I was given no option,” the former Nyaribari Chache member of Parliament recounts.

But this was familiar ground for Nyachae. Just six years earlier in 1969, while serving as the Rift Valley provincial commissioner, he represented the government during the equally explosive burial of Mboya.

Unlike JM, who hailed from nearby Central Province, Mboya was from the far-flung Rusinga Island and transporting the body by road across the tense and hostile country was one of the most difficult tasks that Nyachae was to perform as an administrator.

“The body had to go through Kisumu, where there was trouble and the GSU had to shoot in the air to quell riots. Similar chaos greeted the arrival of the body at Homa Bay,” Nyachae writes in his book.

However, the exploits of Nyachae and Mahihu as PCs are dwarfed by those of Isaiah Mwai Mathenge, the last “governor” of Rift Valley. Being the longest serving provincial commissioner in the history of the country, Mathenge, who died in 2006, is famous for turning Nakuru into the headquarters of Kenyan politics.

Mathenge traversed the expansive province, trampling underfoot any unlucky underlings who happened to stand between him and his quest for supremacy.

Not even Daniel arap Moi, then vice-president, was spared the wrath of the abrasive administrator. It has been said that Mathenge occasionally flagged down Moi’s motorcade and subjected him to inspection by lowly policemen, just to humiliate him.

Also unforgettable are Mathenge’s political scuffles with firebrand politician Dickson Kihika Kimani, the climax of which was the 1974 General Election where the PC, in a bid to frustrate Kimani’s political supremacy in Nakuru, openly campaigned for Mark Mwithaga, who went ahead to win.

Mathenge’s influence declined with Kenyatta’s death. Although he had a stint as Nyeri Town member of Parliament, the former PC never again enjoyed the unfettered power he once did, dying a lonely man.

Like Mahihu Isaiah Mathenge didn’t miss out on the land acquisition bogey. He is said to be one of the largest land owners in Nyeri.
Mr Benson Kaaria was the North Eastern PC when the infamous Wagalla Massacre of February 10, 1984 took place.

The government had launched a disarmament campaign in the Wagalla expanse of Wajir District. Security officers from the airforce, the army, the police, and the provincial administration burnt down houses and rounded up thousands of people from the minority Degodia clan.

District commissioners, too, have their place in the hall of impunity. Rubbed the wrong way by a teacher who opposed the closure of a church in Kiambu, DC Fred Mwango suddenly discovered the man’s source of insolence — his luxuriant beard. It was a spectacle when the potentate sent APs to get a razor blade and, right there in public, ordered Mr Joseph Mwaura to wet his beard with own saliva and shave as media cameras flashed.

The unlucky headteacher’s standing as a respected headteacher of a primary school and graduate of Alliance High School counted for nothing before the all-powerful DC.

Kalam maduong (the big pen) was Hezekiah Oygi’s nickname. His signature being a law unto itself, how else would you describe the former Rift Valley Provincial Commissioner who would become the Permanent Secretary, Internal security.

In that capacity, Oyugi was powerful enough to establish a short-lived rival intelligence organ to the defunct Special Branch--- now National Security Intelligence Service. It was composed of District Officers ostensibly titled as DO, Environment who controlled their own budgets and were directly answerable to him.

Always photographed in a no-nonsense mood, it is said that Oyugi’s administrative terror was such that a District Commissioner in Turkana would stand attention when Oyugi called from Nairobi.

Oyugi, who died 1992, was named as a principal suspect in the death of Foreign Affairs Minister Robert Ouko in 1992. Both Ouko and former Cabinet Minister Nicholas Biwott, who Scotland Yard also named were arrested but freed after two weeks for lack of evidence.

He left behind a sizable estate.