Boni Khalwale: Doctor seeking to treat Kakamega as governor

Boni Khalwale, “the Bullfighter”, as he is popularly known, was born in 1960 in Malinya village, Ikolomani constituency, to a peasant family

His father, Mzee Staphano Khalwale, was a sugarcane hawker in Malinya and also worked as a cook for white settlers in Kitale, Eldoret and Nakuru.

The mother, Mama Paulina Shinangoi, was a chang’aa brewer, who he fondly refers to as a traditional industrialist.

Khalwale defied all the odds to rise to a medical doctor,MP, assistant minister, senator and now wants to succeed Kakamega Governor Wycliffe Oparanya.

He went to Malinya Primary School between 1967-74 scoring A plain in Maths, B plain in English and C+ in general paper in his CPE before he joined Musingu High School for his O levels.

He scored Division 1 and later joined Kakamega School for his ‘A’ levels, where he scored 3 Principals in Chemistry, Mathematics and Biology and one Subsidiary in General Paper landing him admission to the University of Nairobi in 1980 to pursue medicine.

Khalwale graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery at UoN in 1987.

It it wasn't smooth sailing as he was expelled from the university for 14 months but later pardoned due to students politics. 

Khalwale was posted as a medical officer in Nairobi at Kenyatta National Hospital, Kakamega, Kisii, Machakos, Msambwebi and Kirinyaga districts.

He said his first hands-on experience in management was between 1988-90 in the then Kakamega District (now Kakamega county) where he boasts of ensuring that all hospitals, health centres and dispensaries were optimally operational with adequate staff, constant supply of medicine and vaccines.

Later, he moved into private practice in Mombasa and Kakamega towns from where he rose to join national politics.

He lost in his first parliamentary bid 1997 but won in 2002 ,when he was elected Ikolomani MP on the Ford Kenya ticket, which was then under the leadership of the late Kijana Wamalwa.

He served in the National Assembly until 2013.

While serving as MP in the first term, Khalwale was appointed EAC assistant minister in retired President Mwai Kibaki’s government.

He was re-elected to Parliament in 2007, this time on the New Ford Kenya party ticket and subsequently elected Public Accounts Committee chairman.

His election would later be nullified through an election petition filed by his fiercest rival Bernard Shinali. He, however, won the seat again in the ensuing by-election and retained the PAC chairmanship.

In 2013, he successfully vied for the Kakamega Senate seat on Musalia Mudavadi's United Democratic Forum ticket in 2013.

During his tenure as MP, Ikolomani constituency received Sh595 million in cumulative CDF disbursements, money which he used to build two district hospitals at Shibwe and Iguhu and upgraded all health centres to modern dispensaries for expectant mothers to give birth comfortably.

He says he built Imulama, Shihalia, Imalava and Musoli health centres using CDF.

“Ikolomani has the best health infrastructure in Kakamega county.  In fact, in the 10 years Oparanya has been governor, he has not built any health facility in the subcounty,” he said.

He also built two bridges across River Yala and three more across River Isiukhu.

It was during his tenure as MP, he says, that he pushed the tarmacking of the Sigalagala-Butere-Sidindi, the construction of Bushiangala TTI and upgrading of the Sigalagala Technical Training Institute to a national polytechnic as well as the commencement of the building  of the Malinya Stadium. The stadium has since stalled.

He also says he built 21 primary schools and five secondary schools through CDF and bought nine school buses among others development projects.

During his term as PAC chairman,Khalwale is credited with oversight whose climax was the removal of Kipipiri MP Amos Kimunya as Finance minister over corruption scandals that rocked the Kibaki administration.

In the Senate, Khalwale was again elected PAIC chairman and boasts as the only chair of the influential committee to force the removal from office by impeachment of a sitting governor (Governor Martin Wambora of Embu) over corruption related  issues. He courts, however, saved him. 

“We raised the bar for integrity in the Office of Governor, thanks to my no-none-sense stewardship of the committee that was the backbone of accountability in both the National Assembly and the Senate,” he said.

Khalwale said Oparanya only drove the development agenda of the county in his first term because of the effective overnight he performed as senator.

“The amount of infrastructure initiated by Oparanya in his first term was because of the strict oversight I provided. He has done nothing in the second term because of weak oversight and many of the first term projects have since stalled,” he said.

He cites the upgrade of Bukhungu stadium, the construction of a referral hospital, the Shamakhubu Level 4 Hospital and the Malava milk processing plant.

Khalwale, an ardent fan of bull fighting sport that is popular in Ikolomani, Shinyalu, Malava and Lurambi subcounties, unsuccessfully contested the Kakamega governor seat in 2017 losing to Oparanya.

GOVERNOR BID

Khalwale is for he second time seeking to become governor.

He says he want to use his experience in management of public affairs and  public funds to lead an all inclusive team to spur development, end corruption, nepotism and mismanagement in Kakamega county.

Khalwale says he gained a lot of experience in the management of public affairs during his tenure as assistant minister because he served under a substantive minister — David Koech — who was old and disliked travelling frequently.

With Koech, they fast tracked the integration of the EAC and developed a blue print for the road network in East Africa.

“We were able push for the establishment of the Blue Economy headquarters in Kisumu, construct a superhighway from Arusha to Namanga-Kitengela-Athi River and the building of the Isbania-Migori-Kisii-Kisumu road,” he said.

Khalwale, one of the founder members of UDA led by DP William Ruto, boasts of pushing through several bills that became law in Senate. They include  the establishment of county referral hospitals and the Opinion Polls Act. 

He said that before the enactment of the law, there was as no act guiding opinion polling.

The opinion polls used to be abused as a result and the climax was in 2007 when the polls kept projecting Raila Odinga as winning the presidency and when he lost the election the country burst into an orgy of violence, he said.

Khalwale says the lowest moment in his political life was in 2017, when he got excited prematurely that he had won the Kakamega governor race ignoring close scrutiny of counting, tallying and transmission of results.

“I realised too late that I had been outsmarted. I had run a very good campaign. I was confident that I had won the rave only to see the results being overturned on the screen as I watched,” he said.

He says that his highest moment in public office is the role he played to raise the bar for accountability in former president Kibaki’s administration.

“At that time, Kibaki had given a lot of leeway to Cabinet ministers who became mad and started abusing office. The clarion call of Kimunya Must Go was the culmination of the war against corruption. But as it always does, corruption fought back,” he said.

Khalwale is a happy head of a polygamous family with several children, some young professionals and others still in school. 

Edited by EKibii