The fresh green atmosphere that welcomes you to the administrative side of Nyahururu town is a sight to behold.
Huge trees dating back to the 1980s are an evidence of a once serving administrator, who loved the environment.
Named after its initiator, Machogu Botanical garden sits squarely in front of the Nyahururu Sub County Headquarters, boasting of indigenous species that have remained a reserve of the Aberdare forest.
Education Cabinet Secretary nominee Ezekiel Ombaki Machogu, served as the Nyandarua District Commissioner between 1989 and 1996, making him the longest serving DC of the present, Nyandarua County.
The tall trees that once threatened the stability of the one storied building, prompting the county environmental department to launch a pruning exercise last year to spruce up the area, owe their existence to the now Education CS.
“Machogu was an administrator who served with an iron fist. He helped us fight for this park that had been hived off the Nyahururu DEB Primary school by land grabbers. He is also credited for the diversion of Kenyatta road from the old road that passed the DC’s gate, in what he cited as security reasons,” recalled John Waigwa, a land Surveyor practicing in Nyahururu.
Waigwa continues, “During his tenure, the standards of education in Nyandarua District, then were high. We recorded high marks in both secondary and primary national exams and most of us landed in national schools and prestigious universities”.
Waigwa fondly remembers Machogu for the settlement schemes, where most natives of Nyandarua County now, benefitted from the Settlement Fund Trust (SFT).
“He is accused of settling many of his tribesmen in Nyandarua when there were so many deserving cases. Others ended up getting more than what was set as the limit for settlement, but he still allocated them,” he notes.
“This has in the long-run brought about harmony and made Nyandarua a cosmopolitan area unlike other settlement schemes that are a reserve of a specific tribe,” recounts Waigwa.
The tough DC, as some residents recall him, commandered power that brought many into bad books with him.
A retired teacher at Nyahururu DEB recalled how the administrator victimized him as a Sabasaba sympathizer after the multi-partism supporters running away from the ant-riot police stormed the school to seek refuge.
“He kept calling me a Sabasaba sympathizer yet I was caught unawares when the rioters, mainly parents at the school, stormed the classrooms and hid among students. They could not be tear-gassed out as pupils would be affected,” added the teacher who sought anonymity.
He detested the administrator for hiding behind land cartels, saying they were to blame for tussles the school has had with brokers, who threaten to hive off the schools land from the Mbaria Complex building side, for decades.
On whether he was fit for the education docket, the 75 year old noted that the administrator’s experience was enough for him to hold the docket, but a more experienced person in the education sector would have done better to succeed Prof. George Magoha.
Veteran journalists Nderitu Wanjohi turns his face when we approach him for sentiments on Machogu’s appointment.
Being the only correspondent for the private media to back the Information Officers, Wanjohi, had a rough time working in Nyahururu.
“I always got into trouble with the administration with my writing. An expose on how the administrator was hiding behind the cartels and directors of land buying companies to fleece beneficiaries kept me in bad books with him.
“He would demand all person’s attending a Baraza or a public forum to reintroduce themselves just to check that I was not in their midst; and if I was, I would be whisked away,” recounts Wanjohi.
The 65-year-old journalist who wrote for the Standard and Nation continues, “My father was remanded for a year on claims of giving false information to his (Machogu) officers, while I was on several occasions summoned to the special branch for questioning”.
“On one occasion, my typewriter and note books were confiscated by the police on claims that I was helping the land victims by writing them memoranda to challenge his decisions. They had to go through the tapes manually to see whether they could find evidence to incriminate me but found none,” he notes, calling on the Parliament to grant the public an opportunity to write memoranda on the conduct of the State Officers, before they assume power.
At the Nyandarua North Sub County DCCs office in Ndaragwa, inscriptions “E. O. Machogu 24-1-89 to 16-2-96” stand as evidence of the administrator who took the mantle from his predecessors Simon Nyachae-1964, Yusuf Haji-1977 and Peter O. Raburu, among others.
Until his appointment, Machogu served as MP Nyaribati Masaba and had just lost to Simba Arati in the Kisii gubernatorial race.
