Where was Moi during the Pan Africa media meeting?

I watched activities marking 50 years of the Nation Media Group in Nairobi. In terms of encapsulating the life of Kenya, the commemorative supplement was a tour de force. And by any standard, the list of guests and participants at the conference was impressive.

And this is the point. Is it possible that a man who on a daily basis exercised such direct influence on the lives of millions of Kenyans for half the period the Nation was marking could have absolutely nothing whatsoever to say in reflection?

I’m referring to former president Daniel arap Moi. As I watched the panel discussions featuring former Presidents Ben Mkapa and Joachim Chissano I thought: Kenya does have a former president, doesn’t it? Where is he? Was he invited?

IF HE WAS AND HE DECLINED, WHAT reasons did he give? If he wasn’t, is he that forgettable? Can you be an MP from 1955 to 2002 — 47 years — be vice-president for 12 years and president for 24 years and not have one word sought from you about a milestone so important? And no less frightful, was he remembered, duly considered and found to have nothing to offer?

As a journalist who covered some of the events contained in the supplement, I found the former president’s absence intriguing. This was the perfect setting for an elder statesman. He is the nation’s most experienced living politician.

He is healthy, active and routinely comments on our chaotic politics. His Nyayo are to be found in the middle of every political plot since 1960, even earlier.

Reading through the remarkable pull-out, Kenya’s most outstanding political developments become quite clear. Obviously, the country’s most important political event during the 1960s was independence in 1963.

Mr Moi was a Kadu leader who helped consolidate Kanu’s position by agreeing to dissolve his party. Though not immediately, he reaped great rewards when he was appointed vice-president in 1966.

The most important political event of the 1970s was President Kenyatta’s death in 1978 and, of course, Moi’s ascent to power.

The most remarkable development of the 1980s decade was the attempted coup against him in 1982 which heralded the advent of the police state.

So complete did the repression by state security organs become, that after the infamous 1988 queue-voting elections, the only remaining movement on the political front was an implosion of that apparatus.

This happened in 1992 with the re-introduction of multiparty politics. However, Moi still won two elections — in 1992 and 1997.

But Kenyans succeeded in forcing an unlikely unity among opposition politicians that produced the most important event of the 2000s decade — the final defeat of Kanu, even as Mr Moi was deeply involved in his own succession campaign.

As I listened to the considered reflections of Chissano and the vision of a young President Kagame, I wondered: What would Moi say to such a historic gathering?

It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. What are his candid views on media freedom? On the contract between the governors and the governed? What does he think of Mo Ibrahim’s Prize? On looking back, does he have any regrets?

Mr Moi was a larger than life president. My 20-year-old students laugh when I tell them that during the early years of his rule, the first line of every Voice of Kenya news bulletin at 7 and 9pm on Sundays begun thus: “His Excellency President Daniel arap Moi today attended a church service at...”

They can’t believe that for a long time, he made the front page of the daily newspapers, regardless of what he said or did.

WHICH IS WHY THE ABSENCE OF such a formerly all-powerful and all-pervasive personage from a Pan African conference taking place less than 10 kilometres from his residence must provoke profound thoughts of what a legacy really means.