5,000 guests to attend Wamalwa Kijana’s anniversary

Tuesday marks the 13th anniversary of the death of Kenya’s eighth Vice-President Michael Wamalwa Kijana. His death came at a time Kenya was engulfed in public euphoria since for the first time in 24 years, a new President sat in State House and a new government was in place.
Thirteen years after his death, the euphoria long gone, family and friends will remember Kijana, as he was fondly known at their Kitale home. “The family will have prayers and a thanksgiving ceremony at home before visiting schools set up in his honour,” Water Cabinet Secretary Eugene Wamalwa told The Standard on Sunday.
The younger Wamalwa has for years been trying to fill the huge political shoes left buy his brother. Eugene thinks he now has what it takes to step into national political leadership and maybe just walk the path his brother did for years before his death in a London hospital.

At the time of Kijana’s death, internal rows over the creation of the post of prime minister threatened to split the rainbow alliance and add fuel to a simmering power struggle in the government. Currently, what was Wamalwa’s stronghold, his backyard of Western Kenya is at the centre of a power struggle between the ruling Jubilee coalition and the opposition CORD.
“We come from a political lineage. We were cut from the same cloth and this time round I know politics will dominate the memorial service,” Eugene said.
The family says more than 5,000 guests have been invited for the memorial. “We have sent invitations to the entire leadership of Nairobi County including sitting MPs and MCAs. We have also invited all Nairobi gubernatorial aspirants,” Eugene said. He has been endorsed by several members of the Jubilee coalition to run as Nairobi governor in the the 2017 elections. He says he is yet to make up his mind up on which seat he will gun for.
“All I am sure about is that I will tender my resignation in February next year to run for an elective seat,” the CS said, and hopes to continue the family’s involvement in national politics. The late Kijana was born in Sosio, a village near Kimilili in Kenya’s Bungoma District. Wamalwa was the son of an influential MP, William Wamalwa.

In 1965, he was awarded a commonwealth scholarship to study law at King’s College London, graduating with an LLB in 1968 before going on to the London School of Economics. He was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1970. He returned to Kenya that same year, and taught law at the University of Nairobi. Some of the students he taught there were to become his political allies and opponents later on. During this period, he also ran the family farms in the Kitale area, as well as holding several prominent government positions, including General Manager of the Kenya Stone Mining Company and director of the Kenya-Japan Association.
More than a decade after his death, the Luhya community is yet to find a natural heir to his throne as an individual who could unify the region, a mantle he inherited from fire brand Masinde Muliro who died in August 1992. To date, the region, made up of close to 3 million voters has been in search of a unifying individual who can bring together all the sub-tribes in the region and galvanize them around an ideology.
Many have come and gone but none has had the charisma, oratory skills or the goodwill of not only the community but the nation as Kijana did.