Initially, before the coming of the colonialists, Luos were ruled by traditional leaders and chiefs.
This proceeded during the colonial era, with one of such leaders being Odera Akang'o, who would later be inducted into the British system and made a Senior Chief.
Though, only in charge of a portion of the bigger Luo Nyanza region as he ruled the people of Gem which currently lands under Siaya county, he was known throughout the area for his love and emphasis for the British formal education.
He introduced compulsory primary and secondary education in 1915, after a trip to Uganda for the Namirembe Cathedral concentration influenced him, and ordered parents who failed to abide by the rule to be punished.
He had his own armed police force and a prison, and had them arrested and locked up, with people who refused to go to school dubbed idlers and forced into his farms to work as a punishment.
Akang'o was also a strict ruler whose rules were not to be ignored, and one of such was that no one was to access his kingdom without a written authoritization, a trend that one day landed him in trouble with the settlers.
He never allowed any colonial officer into his kingdom without a written letter from John Ainsworth, the Kenyan native Commissioner.
It was after he jailed a white District Commissioner who didn't have the letter that he was arrested and deported to Kismayu in Somalia.
For fear of skirmishes and riots upon his release, the settlers persecuted the leader on the eve of his release.
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