The minister who gave Kenyatta sleepless nights

By Amos Kareithi

Paul Joseph Ngei’s life reads like one of the movie scripts he might have studied in his drama course. He ‘test drove’ a Mercedes for 20 years. He is said to have saved Kenyatta’s life. But he was also seen as a great threat  to his greatest benefactor

When the a grandson of a seer abandons a military career and chooses to be an editor, and at times punctuates his stories with punches, the results can be quite dramatic.

Ultimately, the Makerere-trained drama king punched his way into jail, detention and international fame.

This man who claimed to have nine political lives is also credited with giving Jomo Kenyatta, the man rumoured to have caned wayward ministers, sleepless nights. Kenyatta admitted to a confidant that every night, he dared not sleep until he was sure that Paul Joseph Ngei had also retired.

Ngei was a direct descendant of the powerful seer and colonial chief Masaku, after whom Machakos town and county are named.

He was born in 1923 in Kiima Kimwe in Machakos District, and attended Kangundo DEB Primary School before proceeding to Alliance High School and Makerere University.

Mercurial temper

At Makerere, he studied drama and once tried his hand at acting in the feature film, Where No Vultures Fly (1951), starring Anthony Steel and Dinah Sheridan.

Ngei also flirted with the idea of being a career military officer and had joined the King’s African Rifles, but found that his rebellious nature was not compatible with army discipline. His brief stint in the military was chronicled by the obituary published by The Telegraph on August 27, 2004.

Exchanging his gun for a pen to articulate his ideas, Ngei joined the East African Standard in the 1950s. The East African Standard had been established in 1902.

Ngei later started his own Kiswahili newspaper, and since this was the era of political awakening in Africa, he found himself drawn into politics.

According to Kenyatta Cabinets: Drama. Intrigue. Triumph, Ngei later worked as an editor of Wasya Wa Mukamba (Voice of the Kamba) newspaper.

True to his mercurial temper, Ngei once punched a colonial officer during a heated argument. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment.

Ngei had chosen the wrong moment to ‘discipline’ the white man. Their quarrel coincided with the October 20, 1952, declaration of a State of Emergency, during which all prominent Mau Mau leaders and sympathisers were rounded up. It climaxed with the arrest of Kenyatta, Bildad Kaggia, Kung’u Karumba, Achieng’ Oneko and Fred Kubai.

Ngei was ferried to Kapenguria where the political trial took him closer to Kenyatta.

Using his quick fist, Ngei is reputed to have saved Kenyatta from physical harm on more than one occasion. At one point, a colonial jailer was about to cane Kenyatta when Ngei intervened and challenged the white man to cane him (Ngei) instead.

On another day, Ngei reportedly found Kariuki Chotara about to harm Kenyatta. He quickly intervened and walloped Chotara.

It is against this background that an unbreakable bond developed between Ngei and Kenyatta, even after they were released and plunged into national politics.

Grand ideas

In  September 1961, when the Kapenguria Six were released after having completed their jail term, Ngei had grand ideas.

According to historian J Makong’o in History and Government, Form 2: “Ngei expected that Kenyans would honour him with the post of secretary general in Kanu and was disappointed when Tom Mboya declined to step down for him.”

He fell out with Kenyatta before independence when he threatened to lead the Kamba out of the nationalist coalition. However, when his party, African People’s Party, failed to leave Kanu as he had anticipated, he rejoined Kanu on September 20, 1963.

According to The Telegraph, Ngei, at times, deluded himself to be equal to Kenyatta for he had kitted himself out with the same kind of leather jacket, fly whisk and walking stick as ‘Mzee’, whose life he claimed to have saved.

 “Ngei was never averse to using his fists on journalists and political opponents, or on rivals in his always complicated love life. He was fined by a Nairobi magistrate for pulling a gun on a Kenyan businessman and threatening to shoot him,” wrote The Telegraph in its obituary.

The controversial politician was suspended from the government in 1966 after he was accused of being involved in smuggling maize, causing a shortage of the commodity.

To the rescue

As would have been expected, Kenyatta came to his rescue by instituting a commission of inquiry, which, under pressure from the Office of the President, concluded that there was no case to answer.

He again made history by driving off in a new Mercedes Benz in 1971 while pretending to test drive it. When the dealers caught up with him, he told them to get the money from the Government.

But the Treasury refused to pay, arguing that the minister had acquired the car for his personal use. The dealers had no choice but to write off the debt, leaving Ngei to enjoy the limousine for the next 20 years.

He periodically used the same trick in Nairobi’s hotels and restaurants, daring the waiters to ‘send the bill to the government’.

Using his connections in government, Ngei acquired a mansion on a five-acre plot in Nairobi, a 3,000-acre ranch at Oldonyo-Sabuk and a beach house in Malindi.

In his prime, had more than 1,000 head of cattle and 2,500 goats, and regularly jetted to London to replenish his Savile Row suit collection.

During the 1974 General Election, Ngei’s supporters forced his rival for the Kangundo parliamentary seat, Henry Muli, to withdraw from the race.

However, Muli later filed a petition seeking a nullification of his opponent’s win, claiming that Ngei had bound Kangundo voters to back him by administering an oath.

Since Ngei had rubbed many people the wrong way, some of his foes, including Charles Njonjo, the then Attorney General, used the petition to humble him. The court ruled that Ngei had committed an electoral offence, and he was disqualified from the consequent by-election.

Devastated, Ngei turned to his friend, Kenyatta, for help, and the grand old man did not disappoint.

According to Njenga Karume’s autobiography, Beyond Expectations: From Charcoal to Gold, Kenyatta summoned Njonjo to State House on a Monday and gave him an ultimatum. The AG was to draft a constitutional amendment and table it before Parliament in 12 hours, where MPs were to unanimously pass it into law.

And, since Parliament was scheduled to go for recess the following Wednesday, Kenyatta declared that if MPs did not enact the law, they would not go for the break.

This is how Constitutional Amendment Act no 1 of 1975, later known as the Ngei Amendment, was effected.

The amendment extended presidential prerogative of mercy to include annulment of the result of an electoral court following a petition if an offence had been proved. As soon as the law had served its purpose of rescuing Ngei, it was repealed.

Karume, who was at the time a close confidant of Kenyatta by virtue of his post as chairman of Gema (Gikuyu Embu Meru Association), records how he sought an explanation from the president.

“I cannot allow a situation where I do not know where Ngei is or where he is sleeping at any given time. I am sure you do not know what he is capable of doing to this government,” Kenyatta told Karume.

“Every time I want to go to bed, I must call him to confirm he is also in bed. If I lose him as a minister, I will not be in a position to control him that way.”

Crafty rival

Having spent seven years with Ngei in jail, Kenyatta had had an opportunity to study him at close range. He had also seen how he easily outwitted the colonial government.

This explains why during the 14 years Kenyatta was president, Ngei was assured of a Cabinet post. Kenyatta’s successor, Daniel arap Moi, also accommodated the veteran politician for some time.

Ngei was ultimately declared bankrupt in 1991 and forced to resign from his ministerial and parliamentary posts.

He, at last, met match in semi-literate but crafty Mulu Mutisya, who ousted him as the Machakos Kanu branch chairman .

By the time he succumbed to acute diabetes in August 2004, aged 81, Ngei, the man who had given Kenyatta sleepless nights, was a pale shadow of himself as he had expended all his nine political lives.

The writer can be reached on amoskareithi@yahoo