On Friday, November 1, Citizen TV unveiled BBC 2018 Komlar Dumor Award Winner, Waihiga Mwaura as the new host of News Night, taking over from Hussein Mohammed who was leaving the broadcaster after ten years.
During the unveiling, the TV station stated that the new replacement would begin hosting the popular weekly political show on Tuesday, November 5.
Waihiga Mwaura, however, has come a long way to be considered as a viable replacement for Hussein Mohammed who was well-known for his hard-hitting interviews and the tendency to not take prisoners during political discourses.
"He is a journalist of impeccable professional standards and a diligent scribe. He is also engaging, persistent and firm," a promo video shared by the broadcaster says.
In 2018, Waihiga won the prestigious BBC Komla Dumor Award, becoming only the fourth recipient in its history, a true testimony to the heights he was scaling as a journalist.
In addition to the award, Mwaura has been instrumental in a number of hard-hitting investigating features that have landed a number of individuals on the wrong side of the law.
The ‘Mara Heist’ investigative piece conducted alongside his colleague Asha Mwilu exposed how officials were allegedly colluding to mint millions from the Masai Mara University, implicating the institutions' Vice-Chancellor, her driver Noor and a host of other varsity officials.
Mwaura was also instrumental in the investigative piece ‘Waiting on Health’ that portrayed how long Kenyans have to wait in hospitals before they are attended to.
Mwaura was also instrumental during an investigation of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics scandal, an expose that had him in court in July 2019, battling claims that the hard-hitting report was based on hearsay.
When the storm had settled, however, the former Sports Cabinet Secretary Hassan Wario, his deputy Richard Ekai, and ex-NOCK official Stephen Soi were arraigned on corruption-related charges.
The Rusinga High School alumni pursued a computer science degree at Africa Nazarene University before his current stint at Citizen TV.
He started off at Royal Media Services IT department before finding an opening on the then-morning show, Power Breakfast onto sports news, like Hussein Mohammed before he moved on to mainstream news, where he curved his own niche as a cutting edge journalist and reporter.
