If God, whom he believes in through his Christian faith were to ask Albert Ekirapa to retrace his steps and make changes to the trajectory his path took as he reaches 90 years old, he would alter almost nothing.
This is another way of saying that 90 finds him with no regrets. What fortune.
From his earliest days as a barefoot boy growing up in Teso, life’s blessings, which motivate us all to wake up in the morning and pursue, somehow came together at different and critical times to become his destiny. His hard work paid off (not everyone’s does); his diligence at work was rewarded (not everyone’s is); good luck came upon him when he needed it (not everyone’s arrives).
And he sustained a close-knit family even as his public service, corporate, private business and political cup overflowed with success; (quite often, those successes are the basic ingredients needed to break up families or make dysfunctional ones).
And more. He would never have become Director, External Aid Division at the Treasury or Executive Chairman of the Nation Media Group for 17 of the 21 years that he worked there, or Member of Parliament for Amagoro Constituency or an Assistant Minister in President Daniel arap Moi’s government among dozens of other high- and low-profile positions were it not for a curious primary school teacher, a veritable angel from heaven, who saved his education career in the 1950s. To transition from basic to intermediate school, exams were set in the native languages— in the Western region Luo and Luhya.
But Ekirapa, a Teso, spoke neither. So he wrote his name on the answer paper and left it at that. He failed, a ticket to oblivion. But a curious teacher inquired after him and on learning the truth, had him sit it in English and gain admission to Nambale Intermediate School in 1955. The rest is history.
There are countless people who fate dealt a similar kind of hand but who either never saw the opportunity standing in plain sight or just couldn’t, for one reason or another, take advantage of it. Destiny.
By sheer force of will, acute inborn intelligence and a hard ethical backbone that was often impervious to risk, he flourished as many peers fell along the way. The problem with cliché’s is that they are just that: cliches. They thus dilute or altogether obliterate the meaning to powerful concepts. To describe Ekirapa as a corporate titan is to enter cliché territory. And yet he was.
Albert Ekirapa and his wife Margaret Wanjiru.
Photo credit: Pool
If we listed the boards he headed or sat on, especially during his tenure with NMG and the Aga Khan Development Network, there would be little space left for anything else in this story. There is a salutary lesson here for all those Kenyans who forge university degrees to get ahead: Ekirapa did all that without one. He is a champion of going for them and has facilitated hundreds of students to higher education. But forgery makes his blood boil. An aversion to cutting corners is the running thread of his life as told not just by himself but by others who have nothing to gain or fear from speaking candidly about their encounters with him.
The dwindling number of senior citizen colleagues who knew him during his days in the civil service, colleagues who worked with him when he headed the AA of Kenya, journalists who worked under him at NMG, lawyers who faced him at the Public Service Commission when they sought to become state counsels and even trainers who handled his horse, Grand National, speak in astonishingly similar terms about his integrity, sense of fairness and plain speaking. If there is one accusation consistently attributed to him by friend, foe and neutral, it is that he suffered no fools gladly.
It is intriguing what a first-rate film-maker would make of some of Ekirapa’s experiences. Take for example January 1964. He was this smart, energetic 29-year-old staffer in the Office of Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta when a call came through from Zanzibar. It was from one “Field Marshall” John Okello, the Ugandan-born East African military and political legend. To quote Ekirapa, Okello said:
“Look! I have overthrown the Sultanate of Zanzibar. But now, I don’t know what to do with this country. Can you come and take it over from me?”
What followed next was a frenetic high-level information-gathering operation about what was happening in Zanzibar and its possible implications on Kenya. Next, action. The top people in the police, armed forces, ministry of foreign affairs and other key government functionaries, became instantly seized of the matter. In short order, a committee agreed that it was a good idea for Kenya to take over Zanzibar. There was a consensus that acquiring the island would greatly boost Kenya’s tourism potential. The Defence Minister, Dr Njoroge Mungai was tasked to immediately take the proposal to Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta for approval. The Army Commander, Brig Joseph Ndolo, said his forces were ready for their orders.
Mzee Kenyatta listened silently to Mungai. At the end of the briefing, he told the minister to see him at his Gatundu home at 7am the following day. But when Mungai arrived there well ahead of time, Mzee Kenyatta had left for Nakuru, saying nothing. He never once uttered a word about that Zanzibar coup and the matter dropped like a dud bomb.
Before entering politics, it was his years at the Nation Media Group that Ekirapa became most synonymous with. He joined the company from the civil service in 1974 with some sort of reluctance. He had cut his teeth in the early civil service whose hallmark was meritocracy and professionalism. But tribalism and patronage, harbingers to mediocrity, were emerging and after thinking twice to an invitation to join the Nation, he decided to jump ship. He first took over the company’s printing arm, Kenya Litho. In 1977, he became the top man and would reign until 1995.
He oversaw exponential growth, including migration from the rented premises on Tom Mboya Street to the company’s own futuristic building on Kimathi Street. He fought hard and delicately with President Daniel Moi’s Kanu government which enjoyed a monopoly of political power until 1991. The government saw the Nation’s independence as an affront to its authority and sought to bring it to heel in a number of ways.
At some point, its reporters were banned from parliamentary reporting and Ekirapa had to seek an audience with President Moi to have that reversed. Its journalists were picked up and detained by the police and Ekirapa had to meet the President to have them freed. In the run-up to the 1992 General Elections, Youth for Kanu 92, a government-backed militia, launched a vicious campaign against the Nation, painting it as a tribal organisation and one hell-bent on getting the Opposition to win. Even the level-headed Ekirapa, a man with nerves of steel, described the campaign as “a very frightening development.”
But all this was nothing personal, just business. Except with George Githii. Githii was the maverick, temperamental, yet brilliant editor who blithely informed Kenyans that the murdered JM Kariuki, MP for Nyandarua North and government critic, was in Zambia when his mutilated body was lying at the City Mortuary. This was in 1975, and it was arguably the lowest moment in the life of the Nation Media Group.
Now with Ekirapa as Nation board chairman, Githii waded into a religious situation within the Bhora Muslim community by writing an editorial that backed one side in a developing schism. Ekirapa told me: “The Aga Khan himself angrily called me about Githii publishing lies about Muslims. We convened a board meeting to demand that Githii justify or withdraw the piece. Githii refused to withdraw it and threatened resignation, citing an Editor’s professional independence.”
Ekirapa told Githii that there was indeed a thing called editorial independence but reminded the gun-carrying, hot-headed Editor that he was accountable to a board. Githii responded by making good his threat. He resigned publicly. Later, he went to Ekirapa’s office to demand his dues. Ekirapa told him he was asking the wrong man, since he was not the one in charge of the payroll. Furthermore, in Ekirapa’s view, he doubted the Nation owed Githii anything, the editor having walked out on the job. He suggested Githii go and see his lawyer.
The next day, Githii came and made the same demand for his money. Ekirapa was reciting the answer he had given the angry editor the previous day when he saw Githii reaching for his gun. “Instinct told me that when a person is drawing his gun, he intends to use it,” Ekirapa said. He didn’t wait. He lunged at Githii and a loud scuffle was heard by people in adjacent offices as the two men wrestled one another. Stan Denman, one of Ekirapa’s colleagues in the board, was first to arrive. The two managed to disarm Githii. They handed his gun to the police, who had been called to the scene.
Githii later wrote a letter of apology and took his rabble-rousing to the Nation’s competition on Likoni Road, The Standard, in the same position of Editor. In the end, having succeeded in alienating everybody that mattered, he left the country. He wound up as a street preacher in Canada, spreading the gospel of Christ.
Yet it is in the field of politics that Ekirapa can truly say “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” At about the age of 55, a group of elders from his beloved Teso birthplace arrived at his Nairobi home with an agenda of a single item: they wanted him to become their Member of Parliament. Ekirapa told them he would retire from the Nation at 60 and only then would he consider their request. They bid their time until then. As soon as his retirement was announced, they returned. And he acceded to their request.
He was elected MP for Amagoro on a Kanu ticket during the 1997 General Election – and life in his household promptly went into a tailspin. In Kenya, there is a lot of awe, glamour and prestige surrounding political office. Many people envy the power on display. What they don’t know about is the stresses and strains that take place away from the cameras and microphones. Once a man or woman ascends to political office, that person becomes public property and the family must play second fiddle. The public owns that person’s time and money and if both are not forthcoming, there will be consequences.
Thumbing through Ekirapa’s notebooks during his time in office is to encounter a man possessed. Long before he became president, political commentators used to uncharitably describe Mwai Kibaki – Ekirapa’s old boss at the Ministry of Finance and of whom he retains an unfavourable opinion – as a man who never saw a fence he didn’t want to sit on.
If you read Ekirapa’s notebooks, you would describe him as a man who never saw a harambee in Teso that he didn’t contribute to. It is mind-boggling how after every entry that began “There was a harambee for….ends with….”I sent 20,000 shillings, I sent 10,000 shillings, I sent 30,000 shillings, I contributed 50,000 shillings, I gave 5,000 shillings, I sent 10,000 shillings…” and on and on.
Speaking to his family members about this period is to make them relive their waking nightmare. The children longed for the dad but he was in very short supply; the public had him. Ekirapa went into the 2002 election with the same single-mindedness he had applied to everything he focused on. He pulled all the stops to get reelected. And that is when the hand of divine destiny, the same one that had held him once so very long ago in primary school, appeared again. He lost.
“I couldn’t see it at that time but if I had won that election,” he told me, “I would have lost my family. My wife, Margaret, held my family together when I was carried away and welcomed me back to the home I had abandoned. Another five years of that life and my family would have disintegrated. I cannot thank Margaret enough.”
He then ticks off names of people he knows whose families were wrecked by their foray into politics. It is sobering. Yet it is also true that there are many people who owe their education to him. At the price of seeming to abandon his family, he lifted up thousands. It is a hard circle to square, the biblical adage that to whom so much is given, so much is expected.
He is celebrating his 90th birthday in both Nairobi and Amagoro. Amagoro is the place where he has planted many different types of indigenous trees – some of which will take almost a century to mature. He has been doing this all his life, late into his 80s. With all of his 90 years, he is still a man of tomorrow.
