A former Senate Speaker urges Rigathi Gachagua to drop attacks, arguing Kenya’s recent diplomacy was a major national achievement.
I read through the statement by former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua during the last day of official business of French President Emmanuel Macro and United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guteres on Tuesday and decided to make a few reflections as follows.. That I have served this Republic as a District Officer, District Commissioner, and — in a distinction, I carry with particular pride — as the First Secretary of Provincial Administration in the Office of
the President during Mwai Kibaki’s time.. I later served as Permanent Secretary, First Governor of Bungoma County, Speaker of the Senate, and now again as the duly elected Governor of the people of Bungoma.. In all those years — across the administrations of three presidents; Daniel Arap Moi, Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta in postings from Kisii to Kajiado to Marakwet to Murang’a, from the field to the highest offices of the Republic — I
have learned one immutable fact: there is no school more humbling, and no teacher more ruthless, than the loss of power.. It is from that place of hard-won wisdom — and from a place of deep personal familiarity — that I respond to my classmates continuing war with his former boss President William Ruto.. I say personal familiarity advisedly.. Because unlike most of those who have commented on Hon.. Gachagua’s remarks on Tuesday, I am
not speaking about a stranger.. As I have written before in this newspaper, Gachagua and I were year mates at the University of Nairobi.. We walked the same corridors between 1985 and 1988.. We sat in the same lecture halls.. We debated ideas about governance, public administration, and the future of this country with the idealism that only young men who believe they can change the world carry within them.. We did not stop there..
We served together as District Officers in the field — in the dust and difficulty of grassroots administration, where governance is not theory but the lived reality of ordinary Kenyans who need water, security, justice, and dignity.. We learned the same things.. We were shaped by the same institutions.. And then we went on to the Kenya Institute of Administration — the KIA — where the Republic of Kenya invested in us further, sharpening our
understanding of public service, ethics, statecraft, and the solemn responsibility that comes with wearing the authority of this Republic.. When I was appointed First Secretary of Provincial Administration in the Office of the President, it was not a title given lightly.. That office sat at the very nerve center of this country’s administrative architecture.. It was a posting that demanded institutional integrity, discretion, strategic thinking, and an unshakeable understanding that the authority vested in you
belongs not to you personally — but to the people of Kenya.. I carried that responsibility with everything the University of Nairobi and the KIA had pumped in me.. I am therefore uniquely placed to say what I must now say — not as a political opponent, not as a stranger — but as a brother to RigyG who shared a desk, shared a campus, shared a posting, and a dream.. Brother Gachagua: Some of
the attributes you have exhibited in recent weeks — we were not taught at the University of Nairobi.. We were not taught at the KIA.. And they were certainly never modelled in the Office of the President.. We were not taught to call a visiting heads of state of a G7 nation an “accomplice” from a press conference without evidence tested before court.. We were not taught that the correct response to 32 heads of
state gathering on Kenyan soil — to €23 billion in signed investments, to the Port of Mombasa receiving 700 million euros, to Kenya securing a G7 invitation for its President — was to stand outside and call it a “sideshow.” We were not taught that diplomatic summitry was conspiracy.. We were not taught that Kenya’s elevation on the global stage was something to be undermined from within.. What we were taught — at the University,
at the KIA, and in the demanding theatre of field administration — is that a country is larger than any one of us.. That the interest of the nation supersedes personal grievance.. That the dignity of the office, even when you no longer hold it, must be preserved.. That a public servant who rose through this Republic’s ranks, who was trusted at its nerve centers, who was honoured with its highest decorations, carries that honour
not as a trophy — but as a lifetime obligation.. As Senate Speaker for five years I received foreign delegations and represented Kenya before international bodies.. I know what it means to carry this country’s flag in a room full of powerful nations.. And I know that what happened in Nairobi this week — Kenya co-chairing a historic France-Africa summit, the first ever held outside a Francophone countries as Kenya signed 11 bilateral agreements that
will transform infrastructure, energy, agriculture, healthcare and the digital economy — was not a sideshow.. It was Kenya’s finest diplomatic hour.. The people of Kenya including my county of Bungoma, Western Kenya, have seen their country stand tall.. They are beeming with pride of being part of a Republic that no longer comes to the world table as a supplicant, but as a confident, sovereign equal — as President Ruto declared: “We should no longer
think in terms of aid and loans, but in terms of investment and what Africa has to offer.” Brother Gachagua, the years we shared at UoN and in the field are years I carry with genuine respect.. The institutions that shaped us bind us in ways that transcend politics.. And that is why, as a classmate I am deeply troubled by what I have witnessed.. You were always better than this.. You understood service above
self.. You were a man who knew that a nation’s progress belongs to all its citizens, regardless of who sits in the seat of power.. I implore you, as a brother, as a year mate, as a fellow servant who has borne this Republic’s highest trust: Rethink.. Reflect.. The Kenya we dreamed about in those lecture halls at UoN deserves better from both of us — and most especially from you, at this moment, having
served the respected office of Deputy President.. The writer is Governor, Bungoma County and Senate Speaker emeritus
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