FROM LEFT: Former Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi, former Nigerian
President Goodluck Jonathan, former PS Thuita Mwangi and former PS
Bitange Ndemo. PHOTOS| FILE
Former President Daniel Moi understands what idleness and desertion can do to a retiree.
Thirteen
years after leaving State House, Mr Moi still worries about what is
going on in his farms, wracks his brain about the various institutions
in which he is patron and minds the duties bestowed on him as the
Chancellor of Kabarak University.
At
almost 91 years, Mr Moi would now perhaps have withdrawn from all
commitments to enjoy a quiet life. But he detests being idle, or
“vegetating” as his long-time aide Lee Njiru puts it.
Both
Mr Moi and Mr Njiru, 66, have deliberately decided to keep themselves
busy as a way of adapting to the disappearance of some friends, the
subtle ridicule by some members of society and the reality of “being
forgotten” that comes with leaving a prominent public office.
It
was a debate recently stirred by former Information Permanent Secretary
Bitange Ndemo, a columnist with the Business Daily and a blogger with
nation.co.ke, who wrote a post criticising the way Kenyans consider
“useless” the people who have quit public jobs.
In
the article, Prof Ndemo said that his phone, which would sometimes
receive as many as 30 calls an hour, stopped ringing soon after he left
office in 2013.
“My ‘friends’ had
moved on. I found myself checking my phone to establish if I had
inadvertently put it off. The phone was fine,” he wrote.
Mr
Njiru, who headed the then Presidential Press Service for decades, told
Lifestyle his experience chimed in with Prof Ndemo’s description after
Mr Moi’s 24-year term ended in 2003.
“I
lost a lot of friends but most of them are crawling back. However,
after the experience, I now deal with them very cautiously,” he said.
In
reference to those who leave top postions, he added: “After you retire,
nobody needs you for anything. You should know that. But when you
establish yourself, after some years, people will respect you again.”
Mr
Njiru said that after retirement, prominent people tend to attract more
critics for no apparent reason, including people wishing for their
downfall.
“People can be very insolent. They won’t attack you directly but will say things without mentioning names,” he said.
Mr
Njiru worked in the president’s communication team from 1977 during the
reign of Kenya’s first president Jomo Kenyatta and rose through the
ranks to be inside the inner circle of Mr Moi, Jomo Kenyatta’s
successor. He told Lifestyle that he was a co-passenger with the former
president on their way home after Mwai Kibaki took over power in January
2003.
Now engaging in farming among
other businesses, Mr Njiru wakes up early every morning to “take
instructions from my boss”. From 5.30 am to 5 pm every day, he is at Mr
Moi’s office at Nairobi’s Kabarnet Gardens and during weekends, he
travels to Nakuru to attend to his farms.
To
cope with the quietness that comes with his life, Prof Ndemo is now a
lecturer because “you need to have some problems to solve” and he also
engages in some research work, including material his column.
Mr
Charles Njonjo, the first Attorney-General of independent Kenya, is
also known to operate on a strict regime long after leaving the
government. Business Daily writer Jackson Biko, after interviewing him
in May, wrote that Mr Njonjo’s discipline was worth emulating.
“I
asked him why he still comes to the office at 95 years of age. What
motivates him to still work? He’s made more money than he or his three
children will ever exhaust in his lifetime yet he wakes up in the
morning and puts on a suit and a tie and he is driven to the office
where he walks into the lifts and presses the fourth floor button and
sits behind his massive desk,” Mr Biko wrote.
According
to Mr Njiru, it is important to have a plan before retirement or
leaving a high position in order to “disappoint” critics because the
shock may be “dangerous”.
“You find
yourself in an alien territory. What kills people during retirement is
not the lack of money. It is the translocation shock,” he said.
His
advice? Look up to God, and take care of your physical, mental and
financial wellbeing. To him, nobody should lack a reason to take a
shower every day and wear clean clothes. He added that it is a disgrace
for an old man to be “seen urinating by the roadside, wearing slippers
even when going out to meet someone and indulging in too much alcohol”.
“When
you are about to retire, start a business — it could be a butchery or a
small shop. Even if you make Sh200 a day, it will give you a reason to
wake up, take a bath and go somewhere.”
In
the post that triggered the debate, Prof Ndemo said that as a PS from
2005 to 2013, he had been receiving over 30 calls an hour and up to 200
emails a day but all that traffic dried considerably when he left
office.
It was almost a similar
experience for former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, who told the
congregation at a church service in May that some of his so-called
friends had deserted him after he lost the recent election — even before
his successor Muhammadu Buhari was sworn-in. Mr Jonathan was in Kenya
on holiday earlier this month.
After
the elections, his spokesman Reuben Abati, in a post on the website of
Nigeria’s Vanguard newspaper, said his phones are now “loudly silent”.
“By
May 29, my phones had stopped ringing as they used to. They more or
less became museum pieces; their silence reminding me of the four years
of my life that proved so momentous. On one occasion, after a whole day
of silence, I had to check if the phones were damaged!” said the post.
UNLIKE BEFORE
Mr
Abati said the condition after quitting public service was a far cry
from what used to happen when he was a spokesman, when “my wife
complained about her sleep being disrupted by phones that never seemed
to stop ringing.”
An incident this
past Thursday involving former Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, now a
co-principal in the opposition Cord, was a pointer to the anguish that
comes with leaving influential positions.
Mr
Musyoka was spotted at the 9 West building in Westlands, where
immigration firm VFS Global handles visa applications for Britain and
Australia. A Nation reporter who saw him noted that although it wasn’t
clear which country Mr Musyoka intended to visit, the process of getting
the visa had evidently frustrated him.
Accompanied
by a guide, Mr Musyoka kept moving back and forth, logging into
computers at the self-service area and, at times, stepping out to make
calls. He looked tired and frustrated as applicants who came after him
completed the process and left.
The
episode must have been a reality check for the Wiper party leader, who
would not have gone through such a hustle when travelling abroad if he
was still in power.
Television
reporter Richard Chacha told Lifestyle that some people ceased
considering him important after an April 2012 accident confined him to a
wheelchair.
Some of his friends when
he was an NTV political reporter and news editor, he said, not only
stopped calling but also did not pick his calls.
“I guess they thought I was asking for favours or something,” he said.
Once
a “most wanted” man when he was a regular at Parliament Buildings, Mr
Chacha said he has lost quite a number of friends he had before the
crash.
“You would even find some MPs
queuing for me to interview them. They would come to me and ask if they
could share their sentiments,” he said.
He,
however, said that what gave him satisfaction was that there were
friends who have stuck with him and that he had made new friends.
“I have come to know who my true friends are,” added Mr Chacha, now running a public relations company.
Prof
Ndemo, who had interviewed over 150 people before writing the article,
suggested the situation was due to the tendency of Kenyans to attach
monetary value to friendships.
“The
Kenyan culture is such that people attach value to friendship, but their
friends value them for their money or influence … We make many of those
close to us to seek material wealth that will give them sustainable
relevance to people,” he wrote.
Interestingly,
Mr Njiru told Lifestyle that most of the people who called him seeking
to talk to the former President were usually after money, perhaps drawn
by “Mzee’s (Mr Moi’s) legendary generosity”.
MONEY POWER
“People
from all over Kenya and overseas ring me. They call for various
reasons: medical assistance, school fees, money for business, money for
politics — usually it is money. They may lie to you that they just want
to greet him, but 99.9 per cent of the time they are looking for money,”
said Mr Njiru.
He, however, acknowledged there were also a number of genuine people who simply come to greet Mr Moi on a goodwill mission.
Speaking
on the issue of finances, the communication chief of the former
Nigerian leader wrote: “The ones who won’t give up with the stream of
phone calls and text messages are those who keep pestering me with
requests for financial assistance. I am made to understand that there is
something called ‘special handshake’ and that everyone who goes into
government is supposed to exit with carton loads of cash.”
Prof
Ndemo said some of the prominent personalities who called him to
associate themselves with his article are the former anti-corruption
czar Prof Patrick Lumumba, and former Foreign Affairs Permanent
Secretary Thuita Mwangi.
The
associate professor’s article sparked a flurry of reactions from Nation
readers, some who said it is the actions of people when they are in
power that inspire the way they are treated when they leave.
“The
problem is [that] when someone gets a big job, he/she shuns the common
man because of class and status. While the people ‘you left behind’
expect you to help them, it is good to try and keep the friends you had
before because you will need them when your artificial status is
expired,” opined Grace Wanjiru.
Another
reader using the nickname Dingdong on the Disqus platform posted: “When
we build power and become drunk with power, we create capitalist
friends since [we] become capitalists ourselves. We communicate for
purpose but not for fun. We try to ‘buy’ friendship with people who
matter ...!”
The debate also raised
the issue of abandonment in retirement. Ms Joyce Wanjiku Kairo, who runs
a foundation to take care of the elderly, told Lifestyle that it is not
just prominent people who face such challenges.
“The
moment elderly people start feeling sorry for themselves, they withdraw
from the community,” said Ms Kairo, the founder of Purity Elderly Care
Foundation.
Ms Kairo has traversed
various parts of the country, especially her Nyeri County backyard, to
attend to the elderly. Her observation is that even a person’s own
children can sometimes neglect them.
“You
buy your parents phones and believe it is enough to call periodically
and find out how they are faring. With M-Pesa, you no longer need to
visit home. When an old person is sick and alone at home and all you do
is send them money, they feel lonely and depression sets in,” she said.
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