obi

ACHIENG’ ONEKO was warned that he was being played by the hyenas but he didn’t listen. As a Luo, the colonial government told him he would be wasted in a worthless pursuit. They told him the government was in custody of information of extensive OATHING by the Kikuyu, which focused solely on a narrow ethno-nationalist agenda. Independence was coming but independence meant different things to different people. To the group around Kenyatta, Kubai and Karumba, independence meant power passing to the kikuyu. For Oneko, it meant an African self-rule. It meant a future government of the Kenya Africans. The second to be arrested on the same day Jomo Kenyatta was arrested in 1952, Oneko would spend nearly 9 years in colonial detention. Later when the warnings by the colonial govt came to pass, Kenyatta again whisked him back to detention, where he would spend another six years. He ended up wasting 15 years of his life during which time his father died, his mother died, his first wife fell into depression and became a mad woman; his children wasted away and his entire family became social anathemas. Luo participation in maumau was a costly blunder that still burdens the Luo community to date. There were mistakes made between 1950 and 1969. The Luo society which emerged in the 1940s and had been led chiefly by B.A Ohanga was a moderate society in support of a multiracial Kenyan society. The Odinga era from the mid-1950s came with extreme radicalism, forcing Luos to start pursuing so called “freedom” and “self-rule” and “independence”; none of which materialized for the Luo. Whereas the Luos of the 1920s could educate their children, producing the earlier professors of Kenya, B.A Ogots etc; after independence, stagnation and decay became the new reality. Achieng Oneko should be celebrated by the Kikuyus more than the Luo. He fought in their war and gave them power. They used that power to advance and treat the same Luo allies as the worst enemies. The 15 years Oneko wasted pale in comparison to the near 60 years that the Luo society has wasted. The years the locusts ate. Sadly, even today, we still have other Onekos amidst us who have learnt NOTHING from history. They will be played and left to waste away. The rest of the Luo society has learnt a very painful lesson and must not repeat the mistakes of Oneko, Odede, Jaramogi, Mboya, Kodhek etc.