A passionate debater on the floor of House

Former Cabinet minister Simeon Nyachae served as Nyaribari Chache MP for 15 years. He easily won the seat in 1992 and served until 2007.

Hansard records indicate how he used his parliamentary seat to champion the interests of his constituents as well as defend the governments of Daniel arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki, where he served as a Cabinet Minister in various dockets.

On May 2, 2006, while supporting the Sexual Offences Bill sponsored by then Nominated MP Njoki Ndung'u (now Supreme Court judge), Nyachae passionately vouched for stiffer penalties for offenders.

“We cannot give in to the human beasts; people who are not human beings in their brains. The people who are harassing people sexually through rape and such similar behaviour are not to be taken for granted. We should take a decision to even isolate them,” said Nyachae.

“I am over 70 years old now. I have never understood why a woman or a girl should be harassed sexually or raped when God has given somebody the brain and technique of convincing a woman or a girl. About two years ago, I said in this House that if I found out that somebody has raped my daughter, wife or granddaughter, I will not wait for the police to handle the matter, I will kill that person!”

His strong views on that matter saw him clash with then Embakasi MP David Mwenje, who demanded that he withdraws part of his contribution for advocating “that people should kill each other if they find them raping their relatives?”

On July 11, 2006, Nyachae strongly defended Kibaki's government over claims of corruption, as the state pushed for more budgetary allocations for the Ministry of State for Administration and National Security.

“I stand to support the Motion after listening carefully to the statement made by the Minister concerned in presenting the case to this House, so that we can allocate money for the Office of the President,” he said.

“Honourable Members say there is corruption in the Office of the President. We are not complaining about such statements because we know that corruption is prevalent in this country. We will not take this as a negative comment because all Kenyans of good will would like to see corruption eliminated,” he added.

He said the increased allocation was meant to provide decent housing for police officers to boost their morale in providing security.

He told the House the insecurity was not a creation of the police but the people who were giving the officers and the office of the President headache.

“Let us join hands rather than complain. The unfortunate thing about this country, and I am sorry to say, is that we turn every issue that requires to be tackled into politics instead of turning it into a management issue,” he said.

When he served as the Minister for Roads and Public Works in Kibaki’s administration, he was always in Parliament to respond to questions by fellow MPs, as well as asking the House to approve more money to support various infrastructure projects.

“Let us do more work in this House to encourage the Ministry of Finance to give this Ministry more money. Let us encourage our development partners abroad, who have money for electrification, to come in, so that they can also support us. We want electricity to be installed all over the country,” he said.

At one time, Nyachae said less than 50 per cent of the fish that came from Lake Victoria reached the market due to lack of cold storage facilities, occasioned by lack of electricity.

“If we can get millions of shillings from abroad, we can get a lot of fish, particularly from Rusinga and Mfangano areas, to the market and enrich those fellows. This is something which needs to be given greater attention,” he told the House.

On March 25, 2003, Nyachae was forced to issue a personal statement to set the records straight on reports that he had pledged some money to the victims of Paradise Hotel bombing.

Then Assistant Minister in the Office of the President, Stephen Tarus, had told the House that Nyachae was one of the prominent Kenyans who promised to support the victims but never honoured the pledge.

Nyachae said he did not make any pledge apart from the Sh100,000 that he gave out to the victims through his wife.