Soldiers patrolling Nairobi streets after failed coup.[Photo/Nation]
Hezekiah Ochuka Rabala, the Air Force Senior Private is remembered as the man who masterminded the 1982 coup attempt.
The 29-year-old was a Grade 1 – the second lowest rank in the military.
The coup was however thwarted after only six hours due to a number of mistakes by Ochuka.
For starters, no Air Force anywhere in the world has ever overthrown a government single handedly.
Kenya could have been the first. Indeed, only one Air Force officer in Africa managed the fete – Ghana’s Jerry Rawlings, President from 1993 to 2001.
Ochuka’s poorly planned equivalent was disastrous where more than 100 soldiers and 200 civilians died.
It would appear that the known plotters were pawns in a wider conspiracy borne of ethnic and political disaffection with the Moi regime.
The “stupid fellows who had no manners” as Charles Njonjo called the key plotters included Senior Private Protas Oteyo Okumu, Corporals Charles Owira, Walter Odira Ojode and Bramwel Injeni Njereman.
The ‘angry ambitions’ of Hezekiah Ochuka- Kenya’s ‘President’ for six hours saw him hanged at Ka-Stick Maximum Prison in 1987.