It is a Ghanaian proverb that says if a bird stays on one tree for long, it invites a stone. That might be one counsel that Moi’s most trusted confidant Lee Njiru missed despite his stellar service as a press man at the presidency.
Njiru has been at the presidency for 43 years!
The veteran communications officer is however under siege after he overstayed at the presidency as founding Father Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and retired President Daniel Moi’s press secretary.
Though Njiru has refused to accept, the Moi’s are no longer comfortable with him and have instead taken the services of Alex Kiprotich.
“As far as we are concerned, Mr Njiru has retired. His term ended in June last year after several contract extensions. The position he held has already been filled by Alex Kiprotich, whom Mr Njiru taught for a year, and then he left,” Moi’s former private secretary John Lokorio said.
Kiprotich is an insider of the Moi’s and has been working at the Standard Media Group, Nakuru Bureau.
Moi family is said to be the largest shareholder of the Standard Media Group which owns the Standard newspaper and KTN.
In a world where people want you only when you are important to them, Njiru has been shown the door despite having stood with Moi when other ‘sycophants’ dropped him like hot iron after he (Moi) lost power in 2002.
Njiru has before narrated how almost everyone run away from Moi after Kibaki became President and he was the only one who consoled Mzee on his trip back to Kabarak, Nakuru.
The press officer described the trip as ‘lonely and quiet’.
He said that his troubles to keep his office as Moi’s press man are engineered by a group of detractors.
“My detractors have devised ways of frustrating me. They even took away a car that I used to report to work at the Kabarnet Gardens in Nairobi,” Njiru told a local paper.
As Njiru fights to keep the office as Mzee Moi’s press man, he should not assume the wise counsel of the Ghanaian proverb!