Ochieng’s unconventional thought process made him a colossus in journalism
By People Daily, April 30, 2021Ken Opala
I visited Philip Ochieng’, fondly known in newsrooms and within the journalism fraternity as Philipo or PO, on January 12, 2010, at his home in Ongata Rongai.
I was accompanied by legendary journalist of the Washington Post David Maraniss and his wife Linda.
We were researching Barack Obama Sr., for Maraniss’s eventual blockbuster, Barack Obama: The Story.
Our visit happened on a sunny afternoon, and Philip was in his element; he easily ventured into his past and reminisced about his friendship with the would-be father of America’s first black president, Barack Obama.
Philip was not just very skilled a writer; he was a great reader and very knowledgeable. He was extra-ordinary in thought – although sometimes a very avant-garde thinker.
As we chatted away that afternoon, he mentioned the fabled Mr Toad, the excitedly reckless character in Kenneth Grahame’s novel, The Wind in the Willows, and also in the play, Toad of Toad Hall. Philip, in his own wisdom, felt that Mr Toad’s character depicted Barack Obama senior.
A very boastful and mischievous fellow, Mr Toad was easily excitable to the point that his driving exploits left him dealing with a myriad car crashes. And he loved the bottle!
It’s an open secret that Obama Sr. liked his tipple. And, just like Mr Toad, he was involved in a number of car crashes, the last one in November 1982 ,that killed him.
Tellingly, Obama and Philip were very close. They met in Nairobi’s Church House in 1959, and immediately became bosom friends. They both later left to study in the United States.
Philip was a beneficiary of the Tom Mboya airlift; Obama made his own arrangements and won a scholarship that took him to Hawaii.
Philip joined Roosevelt College but exited in 1962 before completing his studies.
“It was because of cultural differences and financial problems; I asked to be brought home,” he told me during the January 2010 meeting.
While in the US, he discovered that race “is mainly about fear rather than colour”.
Of course, later in life, Philip gave up on alcohol. But his friends and colleagues are aware that he at times regretted plunging into alcoholism during his youth.
As such, it is difficult for the indefatigable journalist to entirely escape Mr Toad’s depiction, when he mercilessly ravaged the bottle.
When I asked him whether Obama was a drunkard, he responded, “not any more than I was!”
In fact, some people believe that his involvement with the infamous “Kanu Briefs” in the early 1990s was a Mr Toad moment, for he irresponsibly attempted to defend a political monolith that was obviously autocratic.
Mentor and teacher
Philip was one of the people who inspired me to become a journalist, alongside Hilary Ng’weno, and later Kwendo Opanga.
Philip’s book, The Kenyatta Succession, got many of us into dreaming about investigative journalism. Certainly, The Kenyatta Succession was – and remains – one of the most revelatory, even investigative books by a Kenyan journalist.
In the book, Philip and his co-author Joseph Karimi detail the then President Jomo Kenyatta’s death in August 1978 and the politics of denial, deceit, double-speak and half-truths that clouded the transition from the old man (Uhuru Kenyatta’s father) to Daniel arap Moi.
As a student at Moi University, I only knew about the title; but once I got to the Nation Media Group as a cub reporter and made acquaintances with Philip, I borrowed the book from him and really relished it.
I first met Philip when he returned to NMG for what would be his last call in journalism. At the time, Editor Mutegi Njau and I, in the two-man makeshift Investigative Desk, were busy kicking up a lot of dirt that was President Moi’s administration.
I always thought at the time that I was a great journalist until one day Philip appeared with three books on journalism.
“Opala, take these and make sure you return them to me”. They were invaluable.
He remained a mentor, and when I joined The Nairobi Law Monthly as its Chief Editor sometime in October 2013, I convinced the magazine’s publisher Senior Counsel Ahmednassir Abdullahi to give up the last page column to Phillip.
Wordsmith Ochieng’ never missed contributing hard-hitting pieces. I recall one of them in which he ravaged MPs, almost questioning their mental propriety.
“The only reason the proposed Mental Health Bill may not prove too heavy on the Exchequer is that not too many of our leaders will openly seek to personally benefit from it.
Why not? Because to try to exploit it overtly is to announce to all and sundry, that you are “mad”.
Mad? Yes, quite literary.” I gave it the headline, ‘Mental Health Bill: Why MPs may not legislate against themselves’.
I also ran a two-part series of an autobiography he was constructing then. I cannot tell whether or not this first person from Rusinga Island to ever join Alliance High School, completed it.
But one of the memorable pieces I recollect appeared in The Nairobi Law Monthly’s special edition of December 12, 2013, to mark Kenya’s 50th birthday.
The article was titled: Why ‘50 is an epoch’. Philip wrote succinctly about the vices that cripple Kenya and what the country’s focus should be as it embarks on the next 50 years of its journey.
“For, as the philosopher George Santayama points out, it is often our failings – rather than our successes – that determine our ideals … we have also signally failed to annihilate hunger, defeat tribalism, fight crime, provide quality education, tame deathly misbehaviour on our roads, conquer Aids and so on.
That’s why, for the next 50 years we must commit ourselves anew to the task of ridding ourselves of all these scourges.”
“(December 12, 2013) is a day on which we must … be completely honest by reminding ourselves of our numerous failings during those 50 years”
Ochieng’s thought was unconventional, his writing definitely that of a Fifth Columnist. He relished in ravaging the controllers or owners of politics and the destructors of Kenya’s socio-economic fabric.
At times, his enthusiasm for proper and ethical journalism led him to the same path with the fellows whose transgressions he often fought against.
Ethical journalism
Unfortunately, once or twice, he went to bed with them and got his name, character and personality soiled. As stated earlier, his dalliance with Kanu in the early 1990s is a story to forget.
I made subsequent visits to his home in Ongata Rongai in 2013 through to 2017, and during one such encounters, I got to know he was the first person from Rusinga Island to join Alliance High School.
He joined the Daily Nation in 1966, and four years later, moved to Tanzania. “The then President Julius Nyerere insisted that I join the Daily News,” Philip opened up.
Now, 55 years since he joined the Daily Nation as a journalist, his pen has run out of ink – forever. But Philipo will remain a towering figure in Kenya nay, Africa. His unconventional thought made him a colossus.
And this giant of journalism traversed the width and breadth of the continent. The trailblazer wordsmith remains unequalled. Fare thee well, indefatigable Philip Ochieng’. —The writer works with an international organisation that fights organised crime