When Kenya almost had two national Identity cards

KANU executive officer Mwai Kibaki, KANU VP Oginga Odinga and the new Kenya Party leader Michael Blundell at Parliament Buildings, March 8, 1961. [File, Standard]

If all goes according to plan, Kenyans will have a new form of identification before end of the year. The Universal Personal Identification, the new ID, will join a long list of identification documents.

In 1957, when Kenya proposed to introduce a universal form of identification, there was a revolt. All the Europeans in the colony rejected the idea of having their fingerprints taken.