Nasa strategist David Ndii (entre) reacts as he leaves Milimani Law
Court on December 4, 2017. PHOTO | EVANS HABIL | NATION MEDIA GROUP
Before he appeared and spoke during the launch of Mr Raila
Odinga’s party manifesto, Dr David Ndii was passing off as an economist
and columnist.
Few knew that he
was Mr Odinga’s political strategist – a hallowed position sought by
many. His recent appointment as the head of the People’s Assembly
National Steering Committee confirmed that Dr Ndii was indeed in Mr
Odinga’s inner circle.
As an
economist, he is revered by his peers for his brilliance and has been
instrumental in writing party manifestos since the advent of multi-party
democracy in 1990s.
Trained in
Oxford, where he was a Rhodes scholar, the economist has distinguished
himself by writing stinging articles on the Uhuru Kenyatta
administration. More than that, he does not suffer fools gladly.
When
Mwai Kibaki’s Narc came to power in 2002, Dr Ndii was one of the
economists picked to help the Ministry of Economic Planning then under
Prof Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o to develop the five-year Economic Recovery
Strategy for Wealth Creation and Employment (ERS).
RETIRED ECONOMIST
Others in the team included Harry Mule, a
retired economist who had worked with both Tom Mboya and Kibaki, and
Caleb Opon, a former banker.
Although
the final strategy was launched by President Kibaki in June 2003, the
economic recovery was not realised as internal wrangles hit Narc.
While
Prof Nyong’o brought back Dr Ndii to do a mid-term review of ERS,
together with economists Prof Terry Ryan and Mr Mule – they could not
make headway as Prof Nyong’o was fired by President Kibaki after Mr
Odinga led the Orange team, which was opposed to a draft of the
Constitution and won the referendum of November 2005.
With
the exit of Prof Nyong’o, Dr Ndii had nowhere to take his report as
civil servants in the ministry were refusing to cooperate. It is not
clear how much influence Dr Ndii had on the larger Vision 2030 part of
which borrows from the ERS paper.
MEGA PROJECTS
Although
Dr Ndii has of late been critical of the mega-projects such as the
Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), his ERS paper had recommended the
expansion of physical infrastructure.
When
he recently criticised the building of SGR, he was taken on by former
Vision 2030 director, the late Wahome Gakuru, who said: “Can Dr Ndii
offer solutions to our national problems that are practical, real, and
less emotional? Can he spend more time in the village instead of online
and golf courses to understand real economics and avoid voodoo?”
Those who have worked with him say he is a great intellectual.
CIVIL SOCIETY
Dr
John Githongo, a member of the civil society and CEO of Inuka Trust,
worked alongside Dr Ndii for several years at Transparency International
Kenya. He describes Dr Ndii as a brilliant and principled man.
“He
is a person of tremendous intellect and moral clarity. That combination
makes him very profound. He is able to reason, and to synthesize vast
amounts of information,” says Dr Githongo.
He adds that when he was at the TI, “the thinking was done by Dr Ndii and without him we couldn’t have achieved much.”
Dr
Ndii is credited for developing the Kenya Urban Bribery Index, a
research that was carried out by TI with the economist being the lead
researcher. He carried out the research in five towns: Mombasa, Kisumu,
Eldoret, Nyeri and Machakos.
“Until
he came along, there was a theory that it was impossible to measure
corruption. Dr Ndii developed an instrument to ask Kenyans if they had
ever been in a position where they were forced to pay a bribe,” Dr
Githongo recalls. The ground-breaking research was replicated across
East Africa.
ASTUTE RESEARCHER
A
renowned scholar and an astute researcher, Dr Ndii, also an Eisenhower
fellow, has written vastly and has been cited numerous times by fellow
scholars. One of the most cited articles is “Harambee: Pooling together
or pulling apart?” Published by TI and co-authored by Dr Ndii and Ms
Anne Waiguru, the current Kirinyaga governor, who was by then working at
TI.
Other publications by Dr Ndii include “Export Platforms in Kenya” published in 2003, which he co-authored with Graham Glenday.
He
is also listed as “Faculty” in Strathmore’s Safaricom Business
Journalism Fellowship. He holds a doctorate and master’s degree in
economics from the University of Oxford, and another master’s degree
from the University of Nairobi, where he also pursued an undergraduate
degree.
The self-declared
“public intellectual” Dr Ndii has quite the impressive CV. He has
advised governments such as Rwanda on economics and served as a public
finance expert to the Kenya Constitutional Review Committee of Experts
(CoE).
CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES
When
he is not penning controversial articles attacking the government, he
is consulting extensively for international development institutions and
once consulted for Equity Bank as chief economist. He has also worked
as an economist with the Institute of Policy Analysis.
Prof
Makau Mutua, the founder of Kenya Human Rights Commission, describes Dr
Ndii as a brilliant economist, a “strategic political thinking and a
patriot” who cares about democracy and justice. He is seen as one of the
key figures in Kenya’s second liberation and contributed significantly
in drafting Kenya’s 2010 Constitution.
The
economist, is an ardent user of social media, particularly Twitter
where he has over 200,000 followers. His Twitter Bio reads “Economist,
Public Intellectual” and he is one of the most prolific Twitter users in
the Kenyan space. He tweets about his column, which often goes viral,
with hundreds of retweets and replies. Many times, he will take the
opportunity to “school” the seemingly ignorant critics, sometimes even
recommending a list of academic journal articles to the young and
aspiring economists who look up to him.
SHAM ELECTION
His
controversy also spreads to his Twitter account, where tweets perhaps
what is deemed too controversial for a newspaper column.
“Let
me quote myself,” he said in one controversial tweet. “If Uhuru
Kenyatta is declared winner in another sham election, this country will
burn.”
Even with Nasa, Dr Ndii
has been a controversial figure and before the August 8 elections, he
surprised everyone when he dismissed a separate manifesto that had been
uploaded on the Nasa website.
He
described its creation as “a contest between good and evil, between
right and wrong, within Nasa. ..That document is a bunch of people who
were trying to do an implementation plan and they wanted to do specific
things, all sorts of things, but it’s not the manifesto.”
His
most recent article, published on 2nd December, unpacks the rise and
fall of one of Africa’s oldest autocrats former president of Zimbabwe
Robert Mugabe. In the article, Ndii argues that “The Jubilee
administration has spent the last four years burying the economy in a
mountain of unproductive debt.”
CORRUPTION
From
his articles, it clear what Ndii stands for; he is relentlessly against
plutocracy, corruption, monopolies and aid in Africa.
One
of his most memorable articles was the one dubbed “Kenya is a cruel
marriage, it is time we talk divorce,” which was published in March
2016.
In the article, Ndii
makes radical conclusions and calls for a cessation of the country into a
“Luo Nation” and “Mt. Kenya Nation.”
Relentlessly, Dr Ndii says he fights against plutocracy, corruption, monopolies and aid in Africa.
“Frankly,
he is in a class of his own. It’s evidence of the criminal nature of
the Jubilee regime that a man of this calibre could be arrested for
working to make Kenya a true democracy,” says Prof. Makau Mutua, another
critic of the government.
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