Lee Njiru, who served as the press secretary for the late former President Daniel Moi, has now revealed that Moi was close to leaving power during the 1992 general elections.
Speaking during an interview with Dr King'ori on Tuesday, April 29, Njiru claimed that Moi was convinced that he could not win the elections and was ready to leave; however, it took Njiru and other intelligence officers' intervention to fabricate a strategy to ensure that Moi retained power.
"Moi wanted to leave in 1992 and said that there is no way he could have won. But I told him no, and that we are not going anywhere, and told him to give me time. He asked me whether we had any formula, and I told him that we would craft one," he said.
"So I telephoned a few friends, somebody from intelligence from the Kalenjin and Kikuyu community, and we crafted a plan," he added.
Firstly, to kickstart the plan, Njiru claimed that he and his team requested 'many' millions from the president. After receiving the funds, they went ahead and approached Sheldon Muchilwa, who was the then government printer, and ordered him to create posters displaying that Kenneth Matiba was a presidential candidate for the 1992 election, all this without his knowledge.
After the posters were out, the team then hired a team of youths to supply the posters across the country to ensure that everyone was aware that Matiba, who was in London at that time, was vying for the presidency. Njiru also approached and paid prominent Kikuyu musicians to compose songs praising Matiba.
During Matiba's return to the country, the team hired buses and ferried 'friendly' Rift Valley people to welcome him by singing and praising him, which created an illusion that the Rift Valley region was supporting his presidential bid. According to Njiru, this led to a fallout between Mwai Kibaki and led to them independently joining the presidential race.
After Matiba's return, the team also paid for a newspaper page and displayed Matiba's presidential bid poster to ensure that he was completely convinced that the people of the region were by his side.
"When Matiba was coming back from London, we organised buses to carry friedly people from Rift Valley to go and sing for him, and when he found them, he went mad with excitement, and when he was asked who would be the president, he said, Let the people decide, and that is when he double-crossed Kibaki," he said.
"So after this, we had confused Matiba's press; that people from the Rift Valley were very excited about his entry into the presidential race," he said.
The team then approached and paid the late Martin Shikuku, who was seeking a parliamentary seat, and urged him to convince other parliamentary aspirants to join Matiba's party, which was FORD-Asili, and after some politicians joined, they were financed to run for their positions.
Shikuku was then directed to invite Matiba to the Western region and was further directed to announce, using 'strong' local dialect, that 'people should choose Matiba, and since he is sick, I shall take over after he dies' and Matiba, who did not understand a word of what Shikuku said, went ahead and agreed with Shikuku's statements.
"We told Shikuku to invite Matiba in his region and we told him that he should use a concrete local dialect to tell his people, 'choose matiba and because he is sick, when he dies, I shall take over,' and he went ahead and said, and when he went ahead to ask Matiba whether it was true, he said it was true, but he did not know what he was agreeing to," he said.
According to Njiru, Matiba's move to abandon Kibaki created division in the Mount Kenya Region and the Western Region, a division that Moi took advantage of and clinched the presidential seat during the elections.
During the 1992 election, the late former President Moi, who was running using the Kenya African National Union (KANU) Party, bagged 1,962,866 votes and was followed by the late Kenneth Matiba, who got 1,404,266.
The former late President Mwai Kibaki came Third with 1,050,617, and the late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga came fourth with 944,197.
President Moi, who died on February 4, 2025, became president in 1978 after the death of Jomo Kenyatta and retained the seat until 2002, when he handed it to Mwai Kibaki.
