Many Kenyans know Peter Habenga Okondo for his loose tongue, and especially for the disaster his mouth accorded him in 1990 when he warned Anglican Bishop Alexander Muge against visiting Busia.

"He will not leave Busia alive if he dares set foot there," Okondo thundered, in his characteristic carefree manner. Muge visited Busia, and indeed left in a casket, costing Okondo his job in the Cabinet, and along with it a chequered political career.

Underneath the posturing, however, was a rare intellectual who in the early 1960s, along with others, provided Kadu with the theoretical basis for majimbo, the precursor to modern devolution. Okondo was no ordinary man. He was the first Kenyan-African graduate in accountancy and was a hot cake when he jetted in from Cape Town University in 1951.