John-Lewis Onkendi

Corporate, Commercial & Transaction Advisory Law || Fintech || Energy || Projects & Infrastructure || Aviation || Banking || TMT.

[͏͏͏𝐉𝐚𝐲 ⌖ @cagiago_]

I know he annoyed TF out of his kidnappers 😭

[AI (fan) @AndoniIraolaEra]

This celebration is cold man

[bowdz @Bowdz_]

They called Saka average all season now they’re begging for just 60 mins

Arsenal won the prem and the streets within 2 weeks 😂😂😂😂

[💤 @insomniaids]

Madueke in the eyes of Gvardiol

[Point Made Basketball @pointmadebball]

World Cup twitter is in the midst of a generational run of memes

[Osaretin Victor Asemota @asemota]

He is thinking and calculating.

[John-Lewis Onkendi @JohnLewisLegal]

@NCBABankKenya Check DM. Thanks.

[Shiggs @blen_shiigs]

The day I treated a Prof of anesthesiology . She tried everything to avoid medical words , she kept referring to me as sir until I asked her where is the abdominal pain located , she said around the right iliac fossa . I just paused 😒

[AI @nonewthing]

Rice might be the most important midfielder to have played the game.

[h @htomufc]

These Rice outswingers are incredible man, what a player. Load it up every time, pub thinks it’s a goal every time he’s over one.

[Yannick Bolasie @YannickBolasie]

These deliveries from Declan Rice are of the highest quality! On the money everytime 😮‍💨

[Mofiyinfoluwa Odubanke. @__mofiyinfoluwa]

i remain absolutely stunned by the degree of perseverance needed to build a meaningful life

[Marc Geschwind @MarcGeschwind]

Really good analysis from Henry. This is the Ronaldo issue right now.

He's playing as a 9, but he's never been a 9 and he's not acting as a 9. Not giving Portugal those traits and it hurt them today.

[🕊️ @Dr0P1loT]

International footy is funny cuz that Argentina midfield is getting belt to ass at club level

[Big Pheelz 🇪🇸🇦🇷🇳🇴 @yung_pheelz01]

Zinedane Zidane to his son after the match 😂

[y4yi🇦🇷 @yxyiagain]

even in disability

[alani 🇮🇶🇺🇸🇪🇸🇳🇴🇳🇱 @stargirllani]

just got demolished by haaland and we have to face mbappe & friends in a week

[Renaissance ⚔️ Morio @RamzZy_]

Here is your weekly reminder if your motion comes from your alignment with the universe nobody has the power to stop anyone aligned with the universe, only people aligned with people.

Do what's in your gut & you'll find yourself with people on the same lane.

[Bishop♎ @barrack_gumba]

President Daniel Toroitich arap Moi and Nicholas Kipyator Kiprono Biwott first met in the mid-1950s when Moi was Biwott’s primary school teacher at Tambach Government School in North Rift.

They would hook up again in early 1960s when Biwott was through with secondary school education and was looking for a scholarship for college education abroad.

By then, Moi had risen to be Education minister in the coalition government just before independence with Mr Kenneth Matiba as his permanent secretary.

Education ministry was housed at one of the most prestigious addresses and tallest buildings in town then - the five-storeyed Gill House on Tom Mboya Street.

Years later, Matiba would recall Moi entering his office at Gill House one early morning holding Biwott’s hand.

Moi had instructed his PS:

'Ken, get this young man a scholarship to study abroad. He was my favourite student when I taught at Tambach......'

It was done.

Within weeks, Biwott was on a plane to study in Australia on a full government scholarship.

It is in Australia where he met an Israeli girl who he would later marry and bring home.

In later life, the Israeli girl would lead Biwott to make friends with her kinsmen who would chaperon him to a Canaan whose roads were paved in gold.

Back in Kenya, Biwott, courtesy of his old teacher, was straight-away employed by the government and posted as a District Officer (DO) in Meru.

When Moi was appointed Vice-President, he could think of no better personal assistant than Biwott.

He snatched him from Bruce McKenzie, the then Agriculture minister.

Biwott proved as useful to his new boss in his official duties but more so in the back channels.

With powerful forces around State House determined to deny Moi resources that would make him a political threat, it is Biwott who secretly established liaisons with middle-level civil servants to ensure that Moi at least got Lazarus’ crumbs from the high table.

Biwott was also strategic such that while picking crumbs from under the table, he learned lessons that would prove useful when his boss would take over at the high table and Biwott would sprint away with the whole loaf – including the wrapper and knife.

It is about the same time when Biwott partnered with Israeli businesses which taught him to smell a good deal from miles away and follow the money.

Inevitably, Biwott would be Moi’s automatic right hand man when he took over the presidency.

But unlike many who got close to Moi only to burn their fingers, Biwott had studied the boss well enough to know he had an instinct not to wholly trust anyone let alone share power.

Thus while others like Charles Njonjo, Geoffrey Gitahi 'GG' Kariuki, Simeon Nyachae and Hezekiah Oyugi came so close to the fire as to get burned, Biwott kept a safe distance - not too near to get burned and not too far to freeze.

Biwott also borrowed two vital lessons from Machiavelli:

One, that power isn’t necessarily the reality of it. The perception that you have power at times is more effective than power itself.

Lesson number two was that in power play, being feared is better than being loved.

That's how the TOTAL MAN survived the politics of this country. Sketchy and ended up taking a whole village to Australia.