Angry Nyong’o can’t stop being a study in contrasts

If there is one person who should appreciate the importance of a nurse and a good healthcare system, it is Prof Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, the minister for Medical Services.

Only last year, the good professor of political science survived a life-threatening cancer, thanks to specialised medical attention in the US.

Prof Nyong’o would announce he was recovering from prostate cancer as the country mourned Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai who died of ovarian cancer and novelist-doctor Margaret Ogolla, who succumbed to breast cancer — with doctors warning the disease was becoming endemic.

An accomplished poet and intellectual with enviable reform credentials rooted in the 1980s’ fight against the Kanu tyranny, Prof Nyong’o is a study in contrasts.

As a reformist, he was one of the so-called ‘Young Turks’ comprising James Orengo, Gitobu Imanyara, Kiraitu Muringi, Paul Muite, Raila Odinga and Mukhisa Kituyi, among others, who advocated political pluralism and good governance.

Because of his commitment to what he loosely referred to as ‘ideals of social democracy’, he lost his Kisumu Rural seat in the 1997 elections for not kowtowing to Mr Odinga’s National Development Party that swept the board clean in Luo Nyanza.

No apologies, no regrets

Mrs Charity Ngilu, then the presidential candidate for the Social Democratic Party and whom the professor supported, nominated him to Parliament where he continued his firebrand crusade against the Moi regime and personality politics.

He has been a lover of books and a radical since childhood. This is best captured by a poem he composed as a student at Makerere University titled, Daughter of the Lowland:

I cannot let my testicle be crushed/ when I am wide awake/ By the ghosts of an alien clan/ In the half-lighted boom cave / No!/ When I unsheathe the family spear/ And unfeather the poison-horned arrow;/ When I expose the daughter of the low land/ To village gossip and contempt/ Then the books that I have read smash my testicles in my sleep/ my testicles have not been smashed by heavy books.

Students of literature have at one time or another interacted with this poem whose powerful use of phallic imagery tests the bounds of poetic licence.

Prof Nyong’o is an ODM ideologue and a consummate theoretician who never stops reminding Kenyans that he stands for all that embodies the national good. But his tenure at Afya House and stewardship of ODM as the spokesperson paint a different picture.

To many Kenyans, he has failed where even Moi’s semi-literate ministers excelled. Since the turn of the year, his ministry has been stumbling from one scandal into another, and the more Prof Nyong’o defends himself, the more he comes across as a gun full of smoke but no power.

Mention of the ministry arouses images of unrest, disillusionment, neglect and incompetence. So shambolic was the ministry’s reaction to the doctors’ and nurses’ strikes that some concluded the minister could have reserved his best for the supremacy battles with his Public Health rival Beth Mugo at the expense of his core mandate — but that’s another story altogether.

For many years, his professorial mien unnerved opponents, made journalists cower before the camera and earned him awe and respect.

His contempt for personality politics hoisted him above the chattering class. But now this peace has been disturbed, the ego pricked, and the discourse is no longer flattering.

Ikolomani MP Boni Khalwale has threatened to bring a censure motion against Prof Nyong’o, accusing him of presiding over the loss of taxpayers’ money in a scheme to fund “phantom” hospitals by the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF).

Dr Khalwale, the chairman of the parliamentary public accounts committee, has asked Prof Nyong’o to resign over the scam.

“It would be good for us to be told how much money has been stolen to date ... Is the minister now prepared to do the honourable thing to take political responsibility and resign?” Dr Khalwale asked in Parliament on Tuesday.

The House committee on health is investigating how Clinix health centres received Sh202 million for treating civil servants, of which Sh91 million went to non-existent clinics.

Prof Nyong’o has denied wrongdoing over the payments.

“There is nothing that I as the minister would like to hide regarding the NHIF affair,” he said.

The events at the health insurer in the past two weeks mirror a fast-moving Riverwood movie scene. A lonely Prof Richard Muga, the board chairman, calls a press conference to suspend Mr Richard Kerich, the chief executive.

The decision is swiftly denounced by other board members led by the vice-chairman, Mr Wilson Sossion. Then Prof Nyong’o calls from South Africa saying he has suspended Prof Muga for misconduct.

Prof Muga declares Nyong’o’s statement inconsequential because ‘he can only be removed by the President’. Head of Public Service Francis Kimemia steps in and suspends the whole board, including Mr Kerich. Prof Nyong’o overturns the decision.

Then the minister is humbled by his boss, the PM, who sends the board packing and appoints a caretaker team to lead the NHIF. Three days later, President Kibaki gazettes a new board.

In the meantime, the professor who once embodied wisdom, diligence and integrity, is ridiculed by the very same Kanu and Narc-era cowboys he made a name chastising. Kenyans, on the other hand, have a field day on FM stations, calling on him to resign.

But the minister would hear none of it. Where Nyong’o the poet would have stopped and looked at himself hard in the mirror and apologise for not getting it, Nyong’o the minister charges forward like an injured buffalo.

This is not the first time the good professor has thrust himself in the middle of a storm. In March, Prof Nyong’o was criticised for mishandling the nurses’ strike.

When the nurses, who were demanding better pay, abandoned patients in hospitals, Prof Nyong’o sacked them. This from a man who in 1997 lectured Moi on the basics of handling industrial action, an apostle of legitimate protest as a tool for social and political change.

The ODM secretary-general was a self-proclaimed captain of the 2008 mass action following the disputed presidential election results. Some politicians blame the protests for the loss of more than 1,133 lives.

“The same Constitution that gives [nurses] the rights to strike also gives every Kenyan born or unborn the right to life,” he declared ordering them back to work.

This prompted some to say the social democrat looks down on low wage earners, with nurses alluding to his famous faux pas that he spends Sh2,500 on lunch at the Serena daily, an amount far above the reach of many.

The country was treated to a similar circus when doctors went on strike demanding better working conditions and more budgetary allocation for health ministries.

Ironically, the protest coincided with the minister’s flight to the University of California in San Francisco, US, where he was treated for prostate cancer.

When he returned, Prof Nyong’o founded the Africa Cancer Foundation to create awareness and support cancer patients.

Many expected him to take the doctors’ cause and reward the country with a first-class health system. Instead, he simply endorsed plans to rollout the catastrophic medical insurance scheme for public servants.

Narc Kenya leader Martha Karua says the scandal has disgraced Prof Nyong’o and he should quit office.

The Gichugu MP insists it should be investigated by the Auditor-General rather than the Efficiency Monitoring Unit, which is in Mr Odinga’s office.

“The last time there was an investigation of a scam under the PM’s office, namely the maize scandal, nothing came out of it. It will be seen as a cover-up,” she said.

But Prof Nyong’o is no stranger to controversy. In May last year, the minister defied orders by Mr Odinga to reinstate the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital boss Harun Mengich.

The minister had appointed an acting chief executive, cancelled earlier interviews conducted by the hospital board and advised them to re-advertise the post. The matter remains unresolved.

Earlier in 2009, Prof Nyong’o disregarded a list of candidates presented to him by the board and appointed Dr Olang’o Onudi as the director of the Kenya Medical Training College.

Dr Onudi was not even interviewed for the post.

When the matter was raised in Parliament in 2009, Prof Nyong’o said he had discretion to act as he deemed fit.

Away from the health sector, the former University of Nairobi don has caused discomfort in his Orange party where some members describe him as a hardliner, and a polarising figure. They want him replaced.