Mike Sonko: The rise and fall
IKenya’s capital is now run by an unelected of the country’s governing elite. So they fought major general. He succeeds a taxi overlord, back. And won. Journalist and Debunk Media’s Mike Sonko, who used the power and profits editor-in-chief Isaac Otidi Amuke pieced this from his blinged-out transports to buy and together from original reporting, public records batter his way to the governorship. His dramatic and the words of the various participants. rise to power challenged the vested interests The story is extraordinary. And true
n the mid-2010s, before his 40th birthday, Mike Mbuvi Gidion Kioko Sonko straddled Nairobi’s Eastlands like a colossus; a king and his bulging fiefdom. Once upon a time, Eastlands was the hallmark of arrival for the Black African elite. But on seizing state power, that gentry migrated to hitherto Europeans-only neighbourhoods. Left to its own devices, swathes of urban ghettos burgeoned across Eastlands’s flanks.
But Eastlands wasn’t sulking.
Out of the dusty roads, unlit streets and dried-up taps came Sheng, a popular slang made from an intricate mix of English, Kiswahili and other vernacular. The language paved the way for Kenya’s 90s rap culture. Graffiti piggybacked on the music, with both finding their way into matatus, the unruly public transport minibuses ubiquitous in Nairobi.
This evolution saw matatus morph from plain-looking jalopies into manyangas — later called nganyas and now chodas — cosy rides with ostentatious bodywork and exteriors embellished with avant-garde artwork, blasting deafening music.
Matatu crews — drivers, conductors and hangers-on — blinged themselves up as if teleported from a Snoop Dogg music video. They had tattoos, dyed their hair and wore gold and silver teeth, chains, bangles and rings. These exuberant personas were demigods in Eastlands’s jobless corners. They regularly sponsored bottles of cheap liquor and bundles of khat, the narcotic shrub, to the delight of their admirers.
In 2010, when the rest of Nairobi and Kenya got to know him, the 35-year-old Mbuvi was already the undisputed supremo of Nairobi’s matatu subculture. He owned a dozen of the swankiest nganyas, which all operated between downtown Nairobi and the Buru Buru shopping centre, a busy hub with pubs, hypermarkets and discotheques.
Mbuvi went all out, pioneering the installation of TVS at the front of the passenger cabins of his 32-seater matatus, and giving them names like Brown Sugar, Convict, Ferrari, Lakers and Ruff Cuts.
For Mbuvi, who just 12 years earlier was serving time in a maximum security prison, this was already a remarkable turnaround in fortunes. Few realised then that he was only just getting started.
Escape from prison
Born in Mombasa and bred in Kwale, Mbuvi had been a resident of the two coastal towns for most of his life. His father ran a property brokerage, and the young Mbuvi dabbled in the family business. But his wheeling and dealing occasionally crossed the line.
In 1995, aged 20, Mbuvi was arrested and charged with assault. The next year, he was charged with impersonation in the course of cutting his land deals. He was released on bail on both occasions. But he kept failing to appear in court, which violated his bail and, in 1997, was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison.
Mbuvi was sent to the Shimo La Tewa Maximum Security Prison on 12 March 1998. After a month, he feigned illness and was admitted to a hospital in Mombasa, from where he vanished on 16 April 1998, only to reappear in Buru Buru. Mbuvi’s justification for skipping jail was that he needed to pay his last respects to his late mother, Saumu Mukami, whose funeral he had missed. But in reality he just needed a fresh start.
Mbuvi landed in Buru with a bang. Together with his wife, Primrose, Mbuvi scrounged for capital and set up a hair salon, a barber shop, a video library, a cybercafé, an outlet for selling car parts and a clothes boutique. Being a fugitive, Mbuvi operated in the shadows. Primrose ran the show, and the businesses flourished. The couple opened a nightclub, then ventured into the matatus business.
Initially, Mbuvi settled for a couple of worn-out matatus, which he deployed into the deep of Eastlands in Dandor. It was while operating on these Eastlands back routes that Mbuvi gained a deeper understanding of the business and the place. It was also around this time, aged 25 in 2000, that Mbuvi got in trouble with the law again, over yet another property deal gone south.
While detained at Nairobi’s Industrial Area Remand Prison awaiting trial, wardens connected the dots to Mbuvi’s escape from Shimo La Tewa prison in 1998. He was moved to Kamiti Maximum Security Prison and soon he was back at Shimo La Tewa to complete his pending 12-month sentence.
But after nine months he applied for a review. In his dramatic affidavit, Mbuvi claimed he was epileptic and Hiv-positive. He was released on the strength of his supposedly dire medical condition and reported good behaviour.
Back in Buru, Primrose had grown their businesses. It was time to get into the top league of the matatu business. Mbuvi and Primrose accumulated a fleet of Nairobi’s loudest and most dashing nganyas, thereby dominating the Buru route. Money started streaming in.
The logic was simple
Those at the top of the nyanga pecking order make more money a day: by charging higher fares or making the highest number of round trips, or both. The audacity to charge higher rates emanates from the fact that nganyas always have a steady stream of passengers who will wait until their favourite nganya shows up. This group of commuters never minds paying something extra.
Reigning nganyas manage to make as many round trips as possible, because they are exempted from certain protocols within the matatu ecosystem, including the first-comefirst-boarded rule. This meant that whenever Mbuvi’s nganyas got to downtown Nairobi, they skipped the queue, filled up instantly and turned around. The same applied when they arrived at Buru shopping centre.
However, the biggest advantage nganyas had was that they were a law unto themselves. In their pursuit of making as many round trips as possible, nganyas overlapped, took shortcuts, bullied motorists out of lanes and drove on the wrong side of the road. All of this, christened “matatu madness” by Nairobians, was made possible through the collusion of traffic police, who were on the payrolls of matatu barons.
Aside from making him incredible amounts of money — Mbuvi has estimated that on an average day, at the end of the morning shift at midday, he’d have a clean $200 per nganya, excluding whatever he’d make during the evening rush hour — matatus made Mbuvi an el jefe — a boss.
To run his ever-growing matatu empire, Mbuvi recruited some of the shrewdest youngsters across Eastlands to be his drivers, conductors and hangers-on, making him the leader of an influential network.
It was at this time that Mbuvi earned the nickname “Sonko”, which is Sheng for boss or the monied one. Mbuvi’s other moniker, which was never said out loud, was Kabumba — a Sheng term insinuating black magic. Mbuvi’s rise had been so
‘I have a huge plan to inspire the youth, and inspire everybody in this world. I want to inspire Kenyans and make running the Kenyan lifestyle ... I want to tell the young people: please concentrate, be self-disciplined and above all respect the sport and make the sport a real profession.’ — Eliud Kipchoge, who recently won gold in the Olympic marathon, besting his 2016 Olympic time, where he also won gold