Politics started early for Peter Korinko Mositet, the senator from Kajiado county. At the age of 19, he was forced to stand up against an injustice he witnessed firsthand in his village. It was in 1983, during the adjudication of the Ol Choro Nyori land project, of which his father was a member. The irregularities he witnessed in the adjudication angered him and catapulted him into politics, early in life.
“There were few educated people in the area at that time. The highest educated person was a class-seven graduate. The rich and powerful took advantage of this fact and decided to rip off the poor by allocating themselves more shares than the peasants,” he says.
It was from this process that Mositet’s political seed germinated. He was then a first-year student at Kenya Polytechnic, where he had enrolled to study Civil Engineering. “I suspended my education to mobilise people to protest the manner the adjudication was done.”
He wrote a series of letters detailing his grievances to the provincial administration in the Rift Valley. The letters were copied to Samuel Oreta, then District Officer in Ngong division and to the Provincial Commissioner in Nakuru, Hezekiah Oyugi. He also booked an appointment with the Head of the Civil Service, Simeon Nyachae. Upon hearing his complaints, Nyachae ordered the process to be stopped and the outstanding issues addressed. “Oreta annulled the adjudication and called for an urgent meeting of all the beneficiaries.
I presented the issues and, as a result, there was a new adjudication in which everybody received an equal share of 75 acres of land,” says the father of four boys. The victory elevated Mositet to an instant star in the village. “People were happy and they started approaching me every time they had small problems.” Mositet plunged into politics in 1992, after graduating with a higher national diploma certificate from Kenya Polytechnic.
This brought him to the attention of George Saitoti, then Vice President and MP for Kajiado North. “The VP dismissed me as a tout and declared I would never run in Kajiado North. The constituency had been zoned off as a Kanu enclave and life was made really difficult for the opposition.”
The 52-year-old engineer says the country needs to re-engineer its education system in tandem with the times. “It is very important that we invest in quality education. The focus on certificates at the expense of quality education is the reason why corruption has crept into national exams.”
IN FIVE MINUTES
Engineer who has fought for Masaai land rights
1964: Born in Kajiado county 1971: Joined Magadi Nursery School then went to Kiserian and then Arap Moi Primary schools in Kiserian, where he sat his CPE in 1978
1979: Admitted to Maasai Technical School where he majored in Water Engineering and sat ‘O’- Level in 1982
1983: Joined Kenya Polytechnic to study Civil Engineering 1989: Returned to Kenya Polytechnic to study for a higher national diploma.
2007: Joined Jomo Kenyatta University of Advanced Technology for Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering and graduated in 2011
2012: Stood for the Kajiado North parliamentary seat after the death of Saitoti on an ODM ticket. He lost to Moses Sakuda of TNA
2013: Elected senator from Kajiado county
QUOTES
2013: “I would say that the Maasais, particularly, have suffered a lot. This is known to all Kenyans: If you go to many areas of this country, you will wonder how we got the name Olomuruti and yet the Maasai do not live there. If you went to Ol Kalou, where we used to have shrines and our cultural activities taking place all the way from the 1890s up to now, nobody has bothered to consider them.”
2015: “The EACC conducts investigations into corruption. The DPP only receives graft files to approve prosecutions and where there is no evidence, the same suspects are freed. Politicians should leave Tobiko to do his work independently.” he said, defending Tobiko against accusations by Jubilee MPs that he had failed to fight corruption.
2016: “When I look at the urban and peri-urban areas of Ngong’, Kitengela, Kajiado North and even the rural areas, if only we could direct and make sure that we have opened up the roads - we do not necessarily need to maintain them to tarmac standards but make sure that they are motorable”