Baba Moi Is 90.

When I was in Standard Four, a wee sprite of a child with a spectacular degree of agoraphobia, my father decreed that I would carry on the proud family tradition of athleticism. To get off to a flying start, he decreed further that I would join the Makadara Division's schoolchildren who would sing and dance for Baba Moi on the glorious occasion of Ten Years of Nyayo Era and the Silver Jubilee of Uhuru. I did not yet have the courage to point out to my father that athleticism was not a family tradition; it was more an aspiration that struck parents at certain points of their children's lives.

My generation did not understand just how bad things were under Baba Moi; he was, after all, the benevolent man who gave us "free" milk! Primary education, despite the World Bank-IMF SAPs, was still largely free; cost-sharing led to the construction of workshops and Standard Eight classrooms. City Council primary schools were still twenty five children per class, and each class had the required complement of teachers. P.E. was still a daily thing and a child could walk home for lunch without worrying about adults flying around the estate in loud Subaru Imprezas.

My generation remembers the Loyalty Pledge:

I pledge my loyalty to the president and the nation of Kenya.
My readiness and duty to defend the flag of our Republic.
My devotion to the words of our national anthem.
My life and strength in the task of our nation’s building.In the living spirit embodied in our national motto – Harambee!
And perpetuated in the Nyayo philosophy of peace, love and unity.

Our parents did a damn good job of insulating us from the harsh realities of the 1980s. For sure, Baba Moi held the nation together. His apologists will argue that as an autocrat, he was benevolent enough. That all he did was to ensure that the generation of democratically elected presidents would drive the nation to greater heights. But Baba Moi's apologists refuse to acknowledge the sclerosis that infected the State and its institutions when Baba Moi consolidated all political and administrative power in his hands.

Lee Njiru, Baba Moi's aide, will remind all and sundry that Baba Moi ruled for twenty four years, four months and eight days - 22 August 1978 – 30 December 2002, and that by the time he was "retiring", he held the record for the longest parliamentary career of any politician in Kenya. He still does. But he will elide that in the twenty four years, four months and eight days, because of Baba Moi's extreme paranoia, gentlemen like Joseph Kanyotu and Bernard Chunga came to personify Mr Moi's security policy. Others like Ezekiel Barng'etuny, Mulu Mutisya and Sharif Nassir, personified Mr Moi's view of his subjects' intelligence and intellect. Still others like Henry Kosgey (All Africa Games, Kenya National Assurance Company), Kamlesh Pattni (Goldenberg) and Joshua Kulei personified Mr Moi's "business acumen" and poverty alleviation strategies.

By the time Baba Moi called time at State House, Nairobi, by every measure of human development, Kenya was a basket case. The only thing we should thank providence for is that the aftershocks of Moi Era policies came to a head in 2007/2008, almost a decade after Baba Moi's departure though they had been heralded by the Land Clashes (1992) and the Ethnic Clashes (1997), still under Baba Moi's watch.

Baba Moi turns 90 years today. Congratulations to him. But let him not smile too broadly. Thousands of Kenyans were "disappeared" under his watch. Hundreds of billions of shillings of public funds were stolen under his watch. Hundreds of billions of shillings were wasted on white elephants under his watch. Corruption metastacised in the government under his watch. The gap between the filthy rich and the abjectly poor grew wider and wider under his watch. Crime flourished. Militia ballooned into criminal organisations. Our lexicon was enriched by the language of corruption and it defined our nation and our Government.We will get the full measure of the Moi Legacy, and by God I hope he is around to witness the spectacle of the peoples' unremitting hand of hostility directed at him and his own.