That Sakaja Arthur Johnson has been the cool kid of politics since bursting onto the national scene as a 29-year-old nominated MP in 2013 is not in doubt.
Fresh-faced, eloquent, in sharp suits, and dimpled, ladies confessed on social media that they liked him. Presently, however, funny and outright ridiculous memes and stickers have replaced the social media likes and the only expression that people see whenever Mr Sakaja’s face appears is a huge gap in his academic credentials.
The 37-year-old has found himself hogging the headlines for all the wrong reasons after presenting what a petitioner thinks is a degree that was not earned. The senator could be wondering why the hullabaloo, yet Kenyan gospel-cum-secular musician Willy Paul had sung “mbinguni hakuna digiri” (no academic degree required in heaven).
A self-confessed member of a gospel band at Lenana School, Mr Sakaja has found it difficult to make people believe, as the gospel truth, that he is indeed a graduate. This is after having told all and sundry that his education has been entirely done in Nairobi, romanticising how he was a top student right from high school to the University of Nairobi, where he studied, and ‘acquired’ Actuarial Science degree.
Never studied outside Kenya
In an interview with musician Nyashinski in September 2020, the one-time rapper narrated his education journey, saying he had never studied outside Kenya.
“I have never got out of the country. I pursued my education in Kenya, from primary, high school to university,” he said.
Probably, he forgot he had graduated from a Ugandan university just four years earlier. Give it to him anyway, politicians handle a lot of things!
Be it as it may, the self-proclaimed “Super Senator”, just like the price of super petrol in the country, cannot just seem to remain consistent in his utterances.
Despite running a successful laundry business while at UoN, as per his claims, that mwosho mmoja has been hard to come by for him from the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission and the Commission for University Education.
On Tuesday during a rally in Nairobi, he claimed his tribulations are politically instigated because certain individuals do not want “mtoto wa maskini awe governor.” But the irony is that the senator has forgotten how just last year, in an interview with Daniel Ndambuki, aka Churchill, he narrated how his life on UoN’s Chiromo campus was rosy, thanks to his student leadership position and his rich political networks.
He revealed that he owned a salon and a barbershop, ran a successful laundry business, employing several people in the process and earning a whopping 6,000 daily. By the time, he was in fourth year, that is 2006, he already owned a Mercedes Benz bought from Senator Moses Wetang’ula, and an apartment in Yaya.
But for what the father of two seems to lack in academic corridors, he has replaced with a degree of drama and flirtation with controversies. At the height of the Covid-19 crisis, Mr Sakaja was arrested for breaking Covid rules at a time when he was the chair of the Senate ad hoc committee on Covid-19.
The interesting part is that the arrest happened at a club known as Ladies Lounge in Kilimani. But in a classic politician move, he would feign ignorance of the arrest. “Never been arrested. Won’t be. Show me an OB Number,” he tweeted a few hours after his arrest.
He would later though eat the humble pie, apologise and step down from the committee he was chairing.
