General Francis Ogolla was the most silent in the room but was often relied upon to give thoughtful solutions to every problem.
Ogolla and Colonel (rtd) Cyrus Oguna, hailed from the same village and clan and were distant cousins whose fates were largely tied together.
Ogolla died in a helicopter accident in Elgeyo Marakwet on Thursday afternoon. He was among the nine officers who perished when the air craft took off before crash landing a few minutes and bursting into flames.
Oguna told the Star that though the fallen military chief kept a silent demeanour and liked his own company, he was a man of the people who was humble and a pragmatic thinker.
Oguna reminisced their primary school days together, saying they shared class with the general from Class 1 to 4 at Nduru Primary School before Oguna moved to another institution.
Their paths would cross again in campus, after over 10 years when they shared courses at the university.
In campus as in primary school, he said, Ogolla was always the problem solver in the room. He was always holding firm grip of himself even when things were getting heated and out of hand.
“Whether it was doing tough statistics questions or political science concepts, whenever Ogolla walked to the group discussion, everyone breathed a sigh of relief because he would silently listen and when he spoke, he would have the thought that boots the entire thing.
“We would always joke in those discussion groups that ‘a saviour has come’ because he would give the solution to the problems we were grappling with,” Oguna told the Star.
As fate would have it, the two cousins would join the military together on the same day in 1984 but later went different ways as Ogolla would go to the Airforce and Oguna to Army. Oguna would retire early at the level of a Colonel way before Ogolla proceeded through the ranks to be the military top chief.
Oguna said he always looked up to Ogolla for advice and counsel in and out of the military.
“His silence was often time for introspection and thinking through issues. Whenever you engaged him over a matter, he took his time to give genuine thoughts to it and when he gave his solution, his aim was to get the best way forward.”
Even more, he said, Ogolla’s approach to command and leading his teams and the entire KDF was to engage each person based on their own unique background.
He recognised that each person had a background hence dealt with their issues and concerns without generalising.
“The CDF appreciated that everyone did not have a background like his, and you don’t generalise. Everyone have their own unique issues and whenever he was seized of a matter, he was always keen to dig into the background to gain better understanding,” Oguna said.
He said the loss of Ogolla was a serious loss for the country because Ogolla had fine vision for the military and was deeply engrossed in finding ways to enhance the capacity of the force to deliver on its mandate of defending the sovereignty of the country.
