Achesa: From boxer to Sports CS

Sports and Heritage Cabinet Secretary nominee Rashid Achesa Muhamed during the vetting by the National Assembly Committee on Appointment on Friday 09/02/18 [Photo: Boniface Okendo, Standard]

The vetting of Sports and Heritage Cabinet nominee Rashid Achesa was like no other.

Mr Achesa was the only nominee to whom questions were posed in Kiswahili by majority of MPs. It lacked the finesse and fluency witnessed in the vetting of the other nominees.

Unlike the long and impressive CVs presented by other nominees, notably Keriako Tobiko (Environment) and the Public Service, Youth and Gender’s Margaret Kobia, Achesa presented to the committee nothing more than a few pages that barely explained his education.

In his opening remarks, the nominee narrated the difficulties he faced in his childhood, and in the process missed the chance for good education. “My father was a charcoal burner while my mother used to sell sweet bananas. I was born in a family of eight and life was very difficult for us,” he said when he was asked by Speaker Justin Muturi to make his introductory remarks.

He recounted how he was forced to take casual jobs of loading bag of sugar at Mumias Sugar Company, where he also took up boxing. The sport, he said, earned him the chance to join the Kenya Prison’s Service as a pugilist, where he had chances of competing in major tournaments, before the political bug bit him. He served as youth leader for President Mwai Kibaki’s 2007 re-election vehicle PNU, before ditching the outfit for ODM, which he said was more popular in Western.

Achesa served as ODM National Youth leader before joining President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Jubilee.