A tale has been told of a former President Daniel Moi-era billionaire who offered to settle striking teachers' woes from his own pocket.
In the early 1980s, the tycoon, Ibrahim Ambwere, was ready to settle the then striking teachers' salaries for the month amounting to a total of Kshs48 million.
In comparison, with all inflation factors considered, the amount the businessman had offered to settle equals Kshs4 billion today.
In an interview in 2017, Ambwere, who was illiterate at the time, disclosed that he was touched by the plight of the teachers after their salaries were delayed.
“That was a lot of money in the 80s, but I had it and I was willing to bail them out,” he stated.
His generosity at the time, however, landed him in hot soup with the government who launched a probe into his vast wealth invading his personal life.
“I don’t want to talk about it, it still causes me pain,” he told The Standard.
The tycoon owns property in Nairobi, Kakamega, Kitale, Mbale, Kisumu and various other towns but is not the type to show off revealing that he only trusts a handful of people.
Ambwere was born in 1936 to a deaf mother and a soldier father who left to fight in the country's army when he was aged four never to return home.
He then suffered another blow eight years later when his mother passed on which forced him to seek employment at Molo pyrethrums aged 10 but quit the same day.
He then met an Asian mason who employed him as a sweeper for 10 years before leaving him a toolbox that he holds dear to date.
The tycoon then retraced his way back to Chavakali where, with his Ksh 38 in savings, opened a carpentry shop.
He hit his big break in 1963 when Kaimosi Referral Hospital awarded him a contract to make beds but paid him with an ambulance, which he converted to a van and used it to transport timber.
