The 50th anniversary
of East Africa's first black lawyer C.M.G Argwings-Kodhek will be held on Tuesday at Holy Family Basilica.
In an advert in the local dailies, the service will begin at 2pm in Nairobi and there will be a wreath-laying ceremony at his graveside in Gem on Saturday at 3pm.
Critics branded the former Gem MP a "Jaramogi project". (Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, the father of ODM leader Raila, was the doyen of opposition politics in Kenya.)
Argwings-Kodhek, who was an
accomplished lawyer, was
one of Kanu's legal minds at the Lancaster Conference.
In 1966, he
joined the Cabinet as the Minister of Natural Resources and in 1967 he was named Minister of State for Foreign Affairs.
It was during that period that he parted ways with his Irish wife and married Joan Omondo.
On
Tuesday, January 29, 1969, Argwings-Kodhek died after he was involved in a mysterious accident in Nairobi on a road that was later named after him.
Kodhek
went to St Mary’s College in Kisubi, Uganda, where he sat his Cambridge School Certificate in 1936.
In 1937, he enrolled at Makerere University College in Uganda where he graduated with a teaching degree in 1940.
After his studies, Argwings-Kodhek started teaching in the then Nyanza and Rift Valley provinces.
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