Former Lugari MP Cyrus Njirongo says he never contemplated or wanted to join politics but was forced to fight to be in parliament so to protect himself.
In a candid interview with Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna on his YouTube channel, Jirongo narrates how after helping the late President Daniel Moi with re-election during the first multiparty election in 1992, he was offered a nomination into parliament [by President Moi].
“He [President Moi] even gave me a ministerial position. And I refused. Because I never wanted to be a politician. [Due to my refusal] That is how (National Assembly Speaker Moses) Wetangula was nominated [to parliament]. [So basically] I gave Wetangula my nomination [to parliemt] in 1992,” says Jirongo.
He says his focus was to do business. However, a few years later, he says the government started fighting him and his businesses.
“In 1997, the same [government] machinery I was protecting (in the run up to the 1992 election), came after me,” Jirongo says.
That is why “I had to fight to go to parliament to protect myself.”
He recalls a famous quote made by former Siaya Senator who is currently Siaya Governor James Orengo. “Orengo said it well another time, let me not go into that,” says Jirongo.
He agrees that governments turn against those who have helped it.
“Sometimes revolutions eat their own children… governments eat their own people. This government is going to punish you more than they will punish me, I am telling you. In another one year you’ll be crying in my office to come and represent you,” the then Senator Orengo said in the Senate in January 2027.
Watch the entire interview between Jirongo and Senator Sifuna here.