Former Narok Senator, 94-year-old Philip Toikan Lemein, who attended the Lancaster House conference that mid-wived Kenya’s first constitution, remembers Daniel Moi.
The two were schoolmates at the Government African School and Teacher Training College in Kapsabet. Miu was a big man on campus.
Lemein recalls Moi as a strong personality who wielded immense authority. He was in charge of the dining hall for primary and teacher training sections.
After Lemein taught for 20 years in various schools, it was Moi and former Internal Affairs minister Justis Kantek Tepis who prevailed upon him to join politics.
He became treasurer for the Kenya Africa Democratic Union, Narok branch, in 1962 and later joined the delegation negotiated Kenya’s independence in London.
After the Senate was scrapped in 1966, he stood for election in the newly created Narok South constituency, which he represented until 1969.
“However, Mr Moi, then Vice President, and President Kenyatta prevailed upon me not to challenge Tipis who was then a powerful minister in the Office of the President,” Lemein said.
Lemenwas once the secretary of the Narok Peace Committee and also the secretary of the Maasai Council of Elders.
Leaders from Narok county have joined Kenyans in mourning former President Moi's, saying he held the country together, ensured peace prevailed in enabled multi-party democracy.
Led by Governor Samuel Tunai and Narok North MP Moitalel Kenta, they said Moi played a key role in uniting people and ensuring peace prevails.
“Moi was a leader of his time and style, with a secure and majestic place in the history of Kenya,” Tunai said.
“On behalf of the people of Narok county, I tender to his family respectful condolences, as we remember a leader who held a nation together for a quarter of a century, and whose pursuit for peace and national unity remain a legend.”
The governor said Kenya’s second president enabled the dawn of multi-party democracy.
“It is a sad day for the nation, but we take courage in the fact that we had much to learn from him. May his soul rest in peace,” he said.
Kenta said that a giant has gone to rest but the bright lights of peace, love and unity he lit for this nation will continue leading Kenya into the future.
“I condole with the Moi family and the Kenyan people a large for the unimaginable and unbelievable death of one of the founding fathers of this nation,” Kenta said.
(Edited by V. Graham)
