How politicians can retire without losing relevance

Daniel arap Moi, Jeremiah Nyaga, GG kariuki, Justus ole Tiipis and Taaitta Towett. [File, Standard]

Contrary to popular belief, not all politicians are sent into retirement through rejection at the ballot. Some opt to walk away at the zenith of their careers.

So when Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka announced on Friday that he will retire after his first term as president in 2027, if everything goes according to his plan, he was not introducing something knew. In 1999, South African President Nelson Mandela quit after one term in office.

Long before Kalonzo thought about handing the baton to the younger generation, former Agriculture minister and Kanu loyalist, the late Jeremiah Nyagah had walked that route.

At the end of 1991, winds of change were sweeping through Kenya. The nation had just embraced pluralism after decades of single party rule. The winds blew well into the new year, at the end of which Kenya would hold multi-party elections.

By January 1992, new parties were mushrooming, with the opposition keen to dislodge the Kanu regime from the perch it had rested upon since independence. Nyagah, then Gachoka MP, was among those assigned with warding off the opposition’s charge.

But shreds of doubt resided within the older Nyagah’s heart. He had hoped that Kanu would “re-examine itself and work out a way to deliver the goodies to the electorate satisfactorily.”

At a press conference in Embu on January 2, 1992, Nyagah denied that he was planning to defect from Kanu. His assertion was not helped much by the fact that he harboured a member of the opposition under his roof – his son Norman Nyagah, who had joined Mwai Kibaki's newly founded Democratic Party.

At the briefing, the Embu Kanu chairperson announced he would be retiring from politics later that year. He was 71 and had served as MP for 34 years, first elected into the pre-independence Legislative Council in April 1958.

Naturally, the press questioned Nyagah’s intentions. It was an open secret that Norman was interested in succeeding him in Gachoka. And Nyagah, it was suspected, had groomed his son to take over from him.

“That is not true,” he asserted. But when elections were held later in December, Norman inherited the Gachoka seat.

Five years later, it became apparent that Nyagah had groomed more than just one son for the Gachoka seat when Norman’s elder brother, Joseph Nyagah, claimed his ‘birthright’. Joe was elected to replace Norman, who relocated to Kamukunji constituency. Both were retired by the electorate, Norman in 2007 and Joe in 2013.