James Njiru during a fundraising drive with Bishop David Gitari and (right) Mr Njiru in his office Mr Njiru used to marshal Kanu youth wingers to heckle the bishop. File
Some time in 1989 at the peak of his political career, James Njiru accompanied President Daniel arap Moi to Meru’s Kinoru Stadium for a Kanu rally.
Somehow, he was asked to use the former president’s official Mercedes back to Nairobi after Mr Moi took a military chopper home.
Mr Njiru, perhaps too naïve or just being set up for a fall, had the convoy stop at Ngurubani market along the way and he addressed a crowd. His end had come.
The next morning Mr Njiru was summoned to State House Nairobi and was accused of plotting to take over the government.
The man was shaken.
“I told mzee I had not even imagined taking over his government” he would later recall about this State House summon.
Mr Njiru, who was buried last Saturday, knew that his political journey both as the Kirinyaga Kanu supremo and as a minister had reached a dead end.
A year earlier, after the controversial 1988 queue-voting (mlolongo) election, Mr Njiru had emerged as the most powerful minister using his new portfolio as Minister for Political Guidance to summon anyone — including the Vice-President Josephat Karanja —for lecture.
As a close confidant of President Moi, Mr Njiru was one of the blue-chip conformists within Kanu, a rabble-rouser and a demi-god in his Kirinyaga backyard. At Kanu rallies he would charge crowd with his Kanu motto yell and urging on supporters to wag the index finger— the Kanu salute.
He would not hesitate to bring his supremacy battles with his Kirinyaga East counterpart Nahashon Njuno on the floor of the House and in 1980, the two had a physical combat after which Mr Njiru, then an assistant minister for health, was hospitalised.
Mr Njiru had apparently told Parliament that Mr Njuno had refused “to endorse unity resolutions and pose for a group photograph.”
“It is only Njuno, as an elected member who refused to pose for a unity photograph in front of thousands of Kirinyaga people”, said Mr Njiru. Mr Njuno waylaid Mr Njiru along the corridors and would later unapologetically tell the press as Mr Njiru lay in hospital: “I gave him a left hook” displaying his fist.
Mr Njiru claimed he was hit with a chair.
Mr Njiru had grabbed national attention in 1973 when he tabled a motion in Parliament urging the government to make Kenya a de jure one-party state.
But his bid almost flopped after then Laikipia MP, G.G. Kariuki who was meant to second the motion, said he would not support it if it sought a one-party system.
Mr Njiru also wanted Kanu to be reorganised to have the vice-president become the national party vice-president and do away with the eight provincial vice-presidents created in 1966 to ostensibly tame the role of Oginga Odinga as Kanu vice president.
Mr Odinga had opted to resign and form the Kenya People’s Union. It was this motion that made Mr Njiru identify closely with Mr Moi who was a vice president then and he told the House that this role would make it simpler for the president to choose a successor in case he retires.
When Mr Kariuki rose to speak in the House, he dismissed Mr Njiru and said that the party was not well run and that since its formation elections of national officials had never been held, “except the 1966 Limuru conference, which was not an election but an imposition of some characters in the party leadership”.
When Mr Njuno scared Mr Njiru with a gun in February 1983, Mr Moi sacked Mr Njuno as an assistant minister giving Mr Njiru a chance to become the Kirinyaga Kanu supremo.
One of their battles was on whether the Kirinyaga District headquarters should be in Kerugoya or in Kutus.
While Mr Njiru wanted the headquarters to remain in Kerugoya (in his constituency), Mr Njuno wanted it transferred to Kutus.
It was during the clamour for multi-party politics that Mr Njiru emerged as Kanu’s sharp-shooter.
In Parliament, he dismissed those calling for pluralism as “advocates of doom.”
“We know that some of them have been making overseas trips and we even know the deliberations they have gone there for…if you go back to the ordinary people not a single one of them is interested in multi-party system.”
Mr Njiru maintained that it was “tycoons and ambitious” who were behind the campaign.
Although he had in 1989 tried to reconcile with Church of the Province of Kenya’s Bishop David Gitari of Mt Kenya (they both hailed from Kirinyaga) Mr Njiru would not hesitate to marshal Kanu youth wingers to heckle the bishop.
It was Mr Njiru who made the official government announcement that Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses would be banned in Kenya on the basis that it had insulted Islam.
He was also at the forefront asking Western governments to deport Koigi Wamwere and Andrew Ngumba who had fled to Norway.
When Desmond Tutu gave a sermon in Nairobi and dismissed detention without trial as “evil” it was Mr Njiru who took him on.
Although the Ministry of Political Guidance lasted for two years, Mr Njiru—as he would later say—was told by Mr Moi that the ministry has to be dissolved.
“The president told me he thought I had made many enemies because of the ministry’s activities — that many people were unhappy with me.” In January 1990, as he was just about to board a plane for Auckland , New Zealand to join the Kenyan team at the Commonwealth Games, Mr Njiru was barred from leaving.
His end had come. It came after the Moi vehicle blunder and Mr Njiru was soon fired.
He announced that he had quit Kanu to join the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (Ford) which he had fought hard to eclipse. Even here, the attention was more than cold.
