Who Is Allan Wadi? What Is He Made Of? This Is The Story Of The Moi University Student Sent To Jail For Insulting President Uhuru (A Personal Experience)

When I first met Allan Wadi Okeng’o in 2010 in MOI University, little did I know that five years later I will be seated somewhere along MOI Avenue writing about this Political Science student. Back then we were freshers in campus, trying to acclimatize with the new environment that our hard work and exertion had plunged us into.

My very first meeting with Wadi was on a football pitch, where first year students who resided at the periphery of the Moi University vast compound refreshed their muscles and bodies after strenuous orientation processes.

Wadi is a big football fanatic. He also plays football. Aggressively. I heard he also tried rugby but could not run fast enough. He quit.

Yesterday as I walked downtown Nairobi, I overheard people say that after the University of Nairobi, Moi University is another breeding ground for radicals. Nay, that is a lie. I felt like chipping in and shutting up the chap saying this.

He particularly mentioned the likes of Mombasa Senator Hassan Omar and blogger Dikembe Disembe (he, however, does not want us to call him a blogger. He believes blogging is different from posting on facebook and twitter and other social media platforms. So kindly ignore the ‘blogger’ part). Hassan Omar because he was suspended for a record four years by the Moi University administration, only to be re-admitted by President Mwai Kibaki when he took over from the oppressive Moi regime. Dikembe Disembe because he has himself been arraigned in court before for ‘hate speech’. He is also a big critic of the Jubilee government.

     Moi University where some think radicals are bred

How that makes the two radicals I don’t know. Those are the sentiments I heard along Tom Mboya Street.

Back to Wadi’s story. On the pitch, I tackled him and took away the ball from him. He turned against me and wanted to blow me up. I survived, thanks to the rest of the freshers who warned him and threatened to eject him from the playground if he did not understand the basic football rules.

This is where I started knowing exactly who Wadi is. After that brief altercation, he walked straight to me and apologized. Those words still stick in my mind: ‘Hey man I am sorry, I was a bit temperamental. Easy man’. And that is how we became good friends until I left campus. I left him behind.

He studied Political Science. I studied Media and Communication. We could meet in what is commonly known as Common Courses in Moi University. Wadi attended class at will. But what stunned us most were his antics during exams.

A normal university exam takes 3 hours. Those are hours set for students to be able to answer all questions as much as they can, and revise their answers if necessary. To Wadi, however, the university was wrong. Such exams required a maximum of 45 minutes. He was the first student to hand in his booklet after only 45 minutes in the exam room.

What could follow was laughter and murmurs in the hall, with everybody surprised whether Wadi had answered all the questions or he just could not understand anything in the paper. Our lecturers, to date, have answers to this question.

Wadi was aggressive and could do anything to get what he wanted. Dikembe Disembe knows this. At some point, Moi University students had issues with HELB. The body had refused to disburse funds into their accounts. They were feeding on dust, literally, and the administration seemed to do little to freshen up the situation. Wadi offered to travel all the way from Eldoret to Anniversary Towers to air their grievances.

He wrote a proposal and presented it to the dean of students, Dr. Mureithi. It is also important to note that Wadi was a close confidant to the Dean of Students. They had developed a very strong rapport that made many students believe that he was collaborating with the dean to suppress efforts made by other students to reach him.

It was rumored that after that proposal, the dean siphoned close to 100k into Wadi’s account to travel to Nairobi. Whether that’s true or not, Wadi and Mureithi know well. Consequently, HELB behaved finally and this gave Wadi ground to brag and feel high. Whether he indeed helped to force HELB to behave or not is also not known to date as other groups, especially the student leaders, among them Dikembe Disembe, also claimed to have tirelessly made trips to Nairobi to champion for the release of the funds.

There was also a time when students, especially athletes from Moi University were baying for Wadi’s blood. This was after he disappeared into thin air with close to 100k meant for a football tournament organized by the Moi University Vice Chancellor. It is famously known as the VC Cup. After the tournament, Wadi disappeared with the cash and the irate participants swore to teach him a bitter lesson when he re-appeared.

It took time and Wadi appeared when students were sitting for their end of semester exams. He survived on the notion that everybody was busy. Students fear exams more than unexpected pregnancies, forced cuts or Ebola. Nobody had time to question Wadi.

Allan Wadi when he was arraigned in court for hate speech

Regardless of all these, Allan Wadi was not a bad guy to many. On his social media accounts, this wasn’t the first time he sounded controversial. He has always spoken his mind, whether he intends to please you or not.

He criticized the administration at will and when he felt something was going astray. He did so bitterly and with much venom like a rattled python. This perhaps explains why he carried his wrath to the presidency, which turned out to be a wrong move to a wrong entity.

After four years in college, and as we braced ourselves for graduation, Wadi could be seen with books to the giant Margaret Thatcher Library, trying to accomplish what had landed him in Moi.

It is not that his Political Science degree required more years like Medicine and/or Engineering. Wadi had been left behind and was forced to finish school late. I guess, a year after we graduated, Wadi is still schooling. That is why he is again and again referred to as a student.

His conviction will for sure derail and consequently delay his graduation from Moi University even more. To those who knew him, it is reasonable why pleas to release him make a lot of sense. To those hearing him for the first time, his rants on President Kenyatta are enough to put him behind bars.