2017 was a busy year for Kenyans, especially with two presidential elections.
Among key stories were the death of IEBC's ICT boss Chris Msando, the 100-day doctor's strike and President Uhuru Kenyatta and fiery Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho's feuds.
The Star has walked with citizens through the year, covering all major events and giving readers exclusive and behind-the-scenes details.
Below are the top 15 stories published on The Star website since the beginning of the year.
1.
On June 22, the Teachers’ Service Commission released details of the CBA they signed with teachers on October 25, 2016.
The TSC and teachers signed the CBA after long legal battles and demonstrations that paralysed learning in all public schools in the country.
In the CBA, secondary school principals were the biggest beneficiaries, according to TSC chief executive officer Nancy Macharia.
The CBA, which took effect on July 1, running to July 2021, will see all teachers take home larger amounts in salaries, depending on their job group.
2.
On February 14, at the funeral of the late Kwale Senator Juma Boy in Vanga, the differences in NASA over the flag bearer matter played out in public.
This was after Machakos Senator Johnson Muthama announced he had spoken to Boy in hospital on the day before he died.
He said Boy’s dying wish, which he claimed the Senator repeated eight times, was that Muthama ensures ODM leader Raila Odinga becomes NASA’s presidential flag bearer.
This statement angered Wiper Party leader Kalonzo Musyoka who also wanted to be the NASA flagbearer.
Kalonzo was not happy that a member of his party would support Raila who is the ODM leader for the position that he was also seeking.
3.
On April 1, Kenyans woke up to a video, that had gone viral, depicting the alleged extrajudicial killing of two suspected gang members
in Eastleigh.
The minute-long clip showed a person alleged to be a plainclothes policeman apprehending a suspect. The body of another suspect covered in blood was in the middle of the road.
IG Joseph
Boinnet
ordered a probe after members of the public and leaders raised concerns about crimes and this type of killings.
4.
Utterances by Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria rarely surprise.
On February
8, Kuria accused Joho of drug dealing, saying "he will join storekeeper Akasha".
He was reacting to Suna East MP Junet Mohamed's comments the previous night
where he referred to Coast regional coordinator Nelson Marwa as a dog, for targeting particular individuals.
He spoke during an interview on Citizen TV.
Police officers bar Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho and his team from attending President Uhuru Kenyatta's Mtongwe ferry services launch, March 13, 2017. /MAUREEN MUDI
Kuria turned on
Joho, writing on
his
page that:
"I agree with
Junet. Marwa is a dog... a sniffer dog. It has rightly sniffed Joho's drugs."
The MP said
Junet
was
crying foul as his "financier" was going to be stopped from giving him money.
5.
Kenyans witnessed multiple, grisly road accidents this year. On January 13, two people died while five were injured in an
accident involving two private cars along Lang'ata Road, Nairobi.
Police said the two cars were headed in the same direction when the accident took place near Carnivore restaurant.
Two other people were killed
in Kayole and another along the Eastern
bypass
in Nairobi.
These incidents came after 11 people were killed and seven injured in an accident involving a matatu on Katito-Kendu Bay road in Kisumu county on January 6.
A few days later, a motorcyclist was crushed to death by a speeding bus as he drove from Naivasha town to join the busy Nairobi-Nakuru highway.
The accident came hours after a matatu driver died after the vehicle he was driving rolled several times near Gilgil town seriously injuring 13 others.
6.
On September 1, the Supreme Court nullified President Uhuru Kenyatta's win following the August 8 elections and ordered a fresh election.
Chief Justice David Maraga had to apologise for disappointing those who expected a full judgment for NASA's presidential election petition.
"We had long hearings and some of them gone to late at night. I
am sorry we have to disappoint
those who expected a full judgment," he said.
The Supreme Court judge said Kenyans needed to understand that given the timelines they could only summarise their ruling.
NASA went to the Supreme Court to challenge the results of the presidential election, which it said was rigged.
But according to IEBC, Uhuru had won the August 8 election by 1.4 million votes.
Four members of the seven-judge bench ruled in favour of the petition while two - Njoki Ndung'u and
Jackton
Ojwang - dissented.
Justice Mohamed Ibrahim was unable to attend hearings as he fell ill.
Chief
Justice David Maraga takes his position for the second day of
presidential election petition hearings
at the Supreme Court in Nairobi, August 29, 2017. /JACK OWUOR
7.
On June 29, The Star interviewed Co-operatives Principal Secretary Ali Noor Ismail who revealed that two-thirds of the Kenyan population directly or indirectly
benefits from saccos.
He said about 14 million Kenyans were members of a savings and co-operative society and that more than 22,000 cooperatives had been registered.
Noor said the co-operative movement in Kenya impacts not only the agriculture
sector but also all sectors of the economy.
“The total asset base of all co-operatives in Kenya is over Sh1 trillion including the housing, financial, agriculture, manufacturing, transport sectors and even informal sectors," he said at the time.
In that month, savings and co-operative societies controlled over 30
per cent
of national savings and contributed over 40
per cent
of the country’s Gross Domestic Product.
"This has led to the local movement being rated seventh in the world and number one in Africa,” said Noor.
8.
As Kenyans prepared for the August 8 polls, state operatives within the Jubilee Party were seeking to have the
then Senator Mike Sonko drop his bid for Nairobi Governor.
On April 19, The Star revealed that
Sonko has dug in his heels and refused a Cabinet post dangled in exchange for quitting the Nairobi governor’s race in favour of Peter Kenneth.
Multiple sources close to the presidency told The Star that a Cabinet position had been offered and rejected several times.
The plan was that if Jubilee won on August 8, Sonko would have been CS for the Nairobi Metropolitan Region, a new post created for him. He would oversee Kiambu, Kajiado, Murang’a and Machakos counties.
9.
On March 9, Opposition leader Raila Odinga was rushed to hospital after developing a high fever which was later confirmed to have been a result of food poisoning.
The Star reconstructed the events of that day and on March 10 revealed how Ford Kenya Leaders Moses Wetang'ula rushed his NASA co-principal to hospital.
Raila was rushed to Karen Hospital by the Bungoma Senator after he suddenly developed
high fever
and chills lat on Tuesday evening.
Doctors and Raila’s spokesman later said it was only food poisoning.
Raila had joined Wetang’ula and Musalia Mudavadi at the Karen Country Club to meet the then Bomet Governor Isaac Ruto and his Chama Cha Mashinani officials.
They did not order food and it was not known what Raila had eaten earlier in the day or the day before.
But Wetang'ula noticed that Raila was sweating and after loosening his necktie, asked his aides to put him in his car and they rushed to Karen Hospital.
10.
It was weeks of protracted confrontation between the doctors and government after a court dismissed a previous CBA as unregistered and thus not legally binding.
On March 8, doctors' union boss Ouma Oluga penned a passionate letter to his members telling them not to worry over threats of sacking.
"I'm
aware you are all angry, frustrated and disappointed. You should be. The tens of millions of Kenyans who depend on Public Health facilities are too. I'm too.
Ironically, even those who can and should take action and make a difference for our country are equally angry, frustrated and disappointed," Oluga wrote.
The previous day,
President Uhuru Kenyatta had expressed frustration
with
the lengthy doctors' strike saying the government "will sort them out" if talks flop.
He said the health workers were only out to blackmail the government by staging a health crisis, a situation he said is not acceptable.
"If the mediation by religious leaders fails, we will have a problem with them and we will sort them out," he told the meeting on Tuesday.
Doctors union boss Ouma Oluga at the Milimani Industrial Court on February 13, 2017. /COLLINS KWEYU
11.
In the last week of July, reports emerged that the man who was in charge of Kenya's electoral technology had gone missing just days to the polls.
On July 31 reports emerged that the missing IEBC ICT manager Chris Msando was found dead
in Kikuyu and the body taken to
City Mortuary in Nairobi the previous weekend.
The director's
family members and electoral officials including Chairman Wadula Chebukati identified the body at the facility.
A Land Rover Discovery belonging to Msando was earlier traced to a parking lot near Thila Road Mall parking lot.
It was said Msando was one of the few people with knowledge on the whereabouts of the servers at IEBC and many conspiracy theories emerged on why he died.
12.
In February, it emerged that President Uhuru Kenyatta had made a pact with KANU chairman Gideon Moi in relation to the August 8 elections.
The pact was however interpreted as a wider scheme to either slowly neutralise or even isolate Deputy President William Ruto.
Ruto’s grip on the Rift Valley and specifically the Kalenjin community had already been placed in an increasingly precarious position as it emerges that Gideon is working with the then Bomet Governor Isaac Rutto.
After the revelation of the pact, KANU announced that it will support Uhuru’s reelection but field its own candidates for other elective seats where it deems fit.
The deal was said to have been negotiated by the President in person, sidestepping Ruto, who has long been seen as the de facto Kalenjin community leader.
The announcement by KANU was made exactly a week after President Kenyatta paid a visit to retired President Daniel Moi at his Kabarnet Gardens residence, Nairobi.
13.
The war of words between President Uhuru Kenyatta and Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho got to its peak in March.
On March 13, Joho
was barred from attending an event where President Uhuru Kenyatta was set to launch the Mtongwe ferry service.
Joho
was surrounded by heavily armed police officers at Nyali bridge and told that they had instructions not to allow him to go to the venue of the function.
The previous day, at Tononoka Grounds, Uhuru had accused
Joho
of riding on projects initiated by the national government.
14.
On April 8, The Star revealed that NASA architect and ANC leader
Musalia Mudavadi and his think tanks believed that ODM boss Raila Odinga was unlikely to defeat President Uhuru Kenyatta.
An ANC strategy document argued that the best ticket was Mudavadi for President, with Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka as his running mate - and Raila backing both of them.
The document was presented to the NASA Coordinating Committee and obtained exclusively by The Star.
The Mudavadi wing warned that Jubilee was still ahead of NASA in numbers, according to
analysis
of the latest voter registration data.
The ANC document titled Crunching Numbers 2017 said NASA trailed Jubilee in the IEBC vote count by more than 100,000 votes. It put NASA’s numbers at 7,868,373 voters to Jubilee’s 7,951,008.
Of these, 4.12 million voters were in 10 swing counties, the strategy paper said.
15.
On February 24, The Star revealed that
KANU chairman Gideon Moi had struck a deal with President Uhuru Kenyatta who would appoint him to the Cabinet if Jubilee got re-elected.
Uhuru was anxious that KANU would side with NASA, which could threaten his re-election. KANU's decision was also a blow to the opposition that wanted its help in gaining traction in the vote-rich Rift Valley.
KANU sources told The Star the deal was struck after the President and his mother Mama Ngina separately visited retired
President Daniel Moi.
"The Mois wanted to negotiate with Kenyatta directly and get him to commit. That happened before a decision was announced yesterday," a Kanu official familiar with the deal said.
According
to another source, apart from Cabinet slots, KANU would also get a number of lucrative parastatal appointments and plum diplomatic slots.