Despite leading a controversial life, Nicholas Biwott surprisingly had bosom friends even from Luo land, a region where his name evoked bad memories.
Somewhere in Agwara village in Bondo Constituency, resides a family who share more than childhood memories with the late politician.
Mzee Ambrose Nyapada Agola alias Arap Agola and his family, received news of Biwott’s death with shock and sadness, from their home in Bondo
Speaking from his home and on behalf of his late brothers Japheth Osewe Agola, Elisha Owino Agola and sister Jerusa Odero Agola, Agola said his family enjoyed deep friendship and bonded intimately with the late minister.
“I was born in Tambach when former President Moi was a teacher together with my late father who was a vocational training instructor,” said the 84-year-old. “I left Tambach in 1950 after sitting for Kenya African Preliminary Examination and the late Biwott joined Tambach in 1951.”
Agola vividly remembers the close ties they shared with the late Biwott as they grew up in Tambach with his elder sister Jerusa Odero Guga.
“My father was part of the team that persuaded the late Kurgat, the then MP to step down for Biwott,” he said, adding that news of his death hit him so hard that he had to pray at his late mother Grace Sofia Agola’s grave because “it is the late minister and former President Moi who helped us defray her funeral costs when she died in Nairobi in 1985.”
Agolla says that when Biwott’s father died, he accompanied his late father to the funeral, “And when his mother died, he gave me the rare opportunity to speak before dignitaries at the requiem mass in Eldoret and at the funeral where I was accorded the honour to sit in the front row with former President Moi.”
He says that tribalism does not exist between his family and the Kalenjins. Agola hails Biwott for not forgetting their strong bond even when he rose to power.
“He never forgot our family,” Agola said, adding that his passing was “God’s will that a man’s life must end at a certain time.”
