Ngugi's visit to UoN on his 2004 return from exile, in the eyes of a student leader

In 1988, I began leafing through The Standard and other dailies, especially because my father bought them religiously.

It was, however, the magazines that truly captivated me—their bold cover designs, striking layouts, and sharp political commentary. The Weekly Review by Hilary Ng’weno, The Society by Bedan Mbugua, Nairobi Law Monthly by Gitobu Imanyara, and Finance by Njehu Gatabaki particularly impressed me.

During school holidays, an elder brother would walk me through them patiently, story by story, idea by idea.

But the interest in seeking knowledge did not stop with newspapers and political magazines. He therefore began introducing me to the books he encountered in high school—and one name towered above the rest: ="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/national/article/2001520372/ngugi-wa-thiongo-celebrated-kenyan-author-dies-aged-87">Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o<.

I hadn’t yet read Detained, The River Between, A Grain of Wheat, or ="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/counties/article/2001446594/ngugi-wa-thiongo-play-i-will-marry-when-i-want-ends-today">I Will Marry When I Want,< but the obvious reverence my brother had for the writer made Ngũgĩ’s name mythical in my young mind.

He told me how Ngũgĩ defied the Moi government—something very few dared to do at the time—and the iron fist of the Kenyatta regime before that. He spoke of how Ngũgĩ discarded his “colonial” name, James, and declared war on what he described as mental bondage. How he was detained for his writing and later fled into exile. Even before I read a single word of his, Ngũgĩ’s image was etched into my mind as an ="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/opinion/article/2001520379/ngugi-wa-thiongos-legacy-transcends-his-novels?utm_cmp_rs=amp-next-page">unbowed intellectual giant<.

Eventually, I read him—and read him deeply. Alongside Wole Soyinka, Francis Imbuga, Chinua Achebe, Elechi Amadi, and other ="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/opinion/article/2001513926/kenya-should-honour-prof-ngugi-now-not-later-for-his-contribution">African giants of literature<, Ngũgĩ became part of my literary canon. Through him, I learned that the written word could be sharper than a sword, that storytelling could build and lead a healthy rebellion—and deliver results.

Ngũgĩ, my brother told me, had a stammer. But when he wrote, his thoughts roared. His prose shook systems. He didn’t just critique power—he dismantled it, sentence by sentence.

Even in childhood, I had begun to understand what democratisation really meant—what it was to demand “expanded democratic space.” Ngũgĩ radicalised my young mind. He made it impossible to see silence as neutral or oppression as normal.

And then came the stories of student leaders—those who dared to challenge State power within the university gates.

One name that haunted me early was Tito Adungosi, the Student Organisation of Nairobi University (SONU) chairman in 1982. Brilliant. Courageous. Arrested by Moi’s regime. Left to die in prison under suspicious circumstances.

Another was Wafula Buke, whose story gripped my imagination even more.

Buke, also a SONU chairman, was expelled and jailed at Naivasha and Kamiti Maximum Security Prisons for alleged ties with the Libyan embassy, deemed subversive by the State. To us, however, Buke was a symbol of fearless conviction.

Buke’s courage, especially, lit a fire in me. I carried his name with reverence. If I ever made it to the University of Nairobi, I told myself, I would join that unbroken chain of resistance—of youth standing tall against injustice.

For many of us, university wasn’t just a place of learning. It was where ideas collided with action. I became fixated on joining UoN because it had birthed the stories my brother had fed me—stories of Adungosi, Buke, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Willy Mutunga, Ali Mazrui, Mukaru Ng’ang’a, Katama Mkangi. These weren’t just names. They were monuments of defiance.

Then came 2003.

With Mwai Kibaki’s election, a new dawn broke over the country. One of his first acts was lifting the cloud over exiles. Ngũgĩ was invited home.

From that year, political exiles would walk again on Kenyan soil. The ceremonial chancellorship of public universities, once a preserve of the President, was abandoned.

Kibaki appointed Joe Barrage Wanjui as Chancellor of the University of Nairobi, distancing academia from direct State control. It was a powerful symbol: at last, our universities could begin to breathe again.

As students, we rose. We demanded the lifting of the SONU ban. We called for the reinstatement of comrades expelled or suspended during the KANU years. We wanted our voice back.

And on 7th March 2003, I was elected Vice Chairman of SONU. It wasn’t just a student election—it was a historical relay. A generational response. In many ways, I was carrying the spirit of Wafula Buke into the office—proof that the fire lit by student activism would not be extinguished by time, fear, or repression.

Then came the moment that stuck in my memory for eternity.

In July 2004, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o returned after over two decades in exile. During his years away, Ngũgĩ taught at Yale, New York University, and UC Irvine.

Ngũgĩ came back—not just to Kenya, but to the University of Nairobi in November, his last place of work before detention and exile. It wasn’t just symbolic. For me, it was spiritual.

We, the students, received him. It was on 19th November 2004.

I will never forget the energy in Taifa Hall. The air was electric. His wife, Njeeri, stepped out beside him. Chants erupted: “Ngũgĩ for Chancellor! Ngũgĩ for Chancellor!”

The appointment of Dr JB Wanjui as Chancellor in 2003 had not been received well by students. It had caused a split in student leadership, and the university fraternity feared political interference like that of Moi’s time.

We generally believed that, having been a close political ally of President Mwai Kibaki, Wanjui was merely a proxy of the Head of State. Murage Njagagua, then Speaker of the SONU Parliament, led the negotiations camp to ensure calm during Wanjui’s installation.

As a student leader, I sat on the committee that organised Ngũgĩ’s welcome at the University of Nairobi. This gave me the opportunity not only to be part of the team that welcomed him, but to be among those who first shook his hand—alongside Chancellor Wanjui, Vice Chancellor Crispus Kiamba, Eddah Gachukia, the late Arthur Kemoli, the late Ken Walibora, Fr Wamugunda Wakimani, and other student leaders, including the late Oulu GPO.

When I shook his hand—the hand of the man who had radicalised my mind before I even fully understood the word “radical”—I felt a great sense of honour and pride.

He spoke slowly. Thoughtfully. Each word hit like a drumbeat.

Then came his public lecture: “Remembering Africa.”

It was not merely a lecture. It was an awakening.

Ngũgĩ, dressed in a simple shirt with striking African attire, chose to deliver his lecture while seated next to his wife, Njeeri, whose back he kept tapping gently as he spoke slowly—not really stammering to the extent I had expected.

Knowing the background of the man we were welcoming, I also wore African attire that day. This was before a packed Taifa Hall that trembled—not from noise, but from expectation.

He began—not with fanfare, but with a story: how the colonial classroom, church, and prison had worked in unison to separate Africans from their languages, cultures, and consciousness. He narrated history, linguistics, and the contexts of how Africa had been interrupted, dispossessed, and misnamed—but never destroyed.

He said Africa had been dismembered—and that is why there was need to remember Africa.

Ngũgĩ spoke of the African renaissance, not as nostalgia but as necessity. That true liberation could never be achieved without the reclamation of language. That to “remember Africa” was not simply to recall it, but to re-member it: to piece it back together—spiritually, intellectually, politically.

He challenged us—students, professors, politicians—to stop treating English, French, and Portuguese as markers of modernity, and instead turn to our indigenous languages as vessels of dignity, resistance, and healing.

When he spoke about the violence of dismemberment—from the Berlin Conference to the classroom, to the publishing house—many in the audience were emotionally moved.

It wasn’t sadness. It was the recognition of a truth long buried. And it wasn’t only about that truth—it was also about the stature of the person who was telling it, and the way he told it.

Then came the call: “We must remember Africa to remember ourselves.”

By the time he finished, no one clapped immediately. There was a sacred pause, as if we had just come from a baptism of the mind. We left that hall changed. That is why the lecture is etched in my memory.