Kenya’s longest-serving president dies at 95
NAIROBI: Former Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi died aged 95, leaving behind a country still riddled by corruption that became rampant during his rule over the East African nation from 1978 to 2002. Usually pictured carrying an ivory baton, Moi was Kenya’s longest serving leader. Critics described him as a virtual dictator, but despite its poverty Kenya was more stable than many other countries in the region emerging from colonial rule.
Moi succeeded statesman and independence leader Jomo Kenyatta, having served as his vice president. Diplomats said he was transformed from a cautious, insecure leader into a tough autocrat following an attempted coup after four years after he came to power. He set up torture chambers in the basement of Nyayo House, a government building in Nairobi’s city centre that now houses the immigration department.
Thousands of activists, students and academics were held without charge in the underground cells, some of them filled with water. Prisoners were sometimes denied food and water, rights groups say. He won elections in 1992 and 1997 amid divided opposition. But he was booed and heckled into retirement when term limits forced him to step down in 2002 and lived quietly for years on his sprawling estate in the Rift Valley.
Born a cattle herder’s son in a village 200 km northwest of Nairobi in 1924, Moi was a headmaster before entering politics in the 1950s.