Foot-prints In The Sands Of Ogot’s Time Was Tainted With Deliberate Falsification Of Kenya’s History To Serve Eithersuperiority Or Identity Syndrome

I admire the late Professor Bethwell Allan Ogot for two things, but also, I don’t admire him for very many things. The good professor died on Thursday, 30th January 2025, at Kisumu Kenya. I commiserate with the family, friends and the community of scholars in Kenya, East Africa and around the world. It is a deep loss to the world of scholarship, given that Professor Allan Ogot served the world in a dint of global class obligation to humanity where he chose to do so. The two things that make me to admire Professor Allan Ogot are; I. His prowess as a prolific writer of scholarly history and 2. His brilliance when it comes to institutional leadership as evincedin his spotless institutional leadership as Moi University and at Leakey institute of Pre-history.

Professor Allan Bethwell Ogot wrote very many things acrossdecades, the topics of his scholarship ranged from mathematics, history, poetry, short stories, essays, political theories and editing of journals. Among the Journals he edited is Hadith a journal of History, it used to be published two times in a year during the 80’s and 90’s of the last century.Some of its copies have been at the reference section of the Eldoret National Library before the Gen-Z demonstration reduced the building of Eldoret library to ashes during the 2024 protests.

Professor Bethwell Allan Ogot also wrote a very huge tome of a thrasonically inspired Memoir. And I mean the level of being thrasonical in Professor Ogot’s tome of a Memoir is of narcissistic stature. The title of the Memoir is My Foot Prints in the Sands of time. It is a thousand plus pages of a book chronicling series of self-congratulations, academic success, career success and boundless denigrations as well as blames thrown unto those that were able to see some weakness, especially snobbery and snobbishness in the character of Professor Allan Ogot.

Professor Allan Bethwell Ogot was able to carry out very good research in history, but some-times sentimentality overtook his obligation to decency of thought in research onlyto leave him in deliberate mode of falsifying historical facts. For example; in his Journal of History, Hadith, Professor Allan Bethwell Ogot edited and published over 14 pages history of Dini Ya Musambwa (1940-1968) in Western Kenya. Professor Ogot fallaciously argued that Dini Ya Musambwawas an emotional reaction by the Bukusu people against the British because the British Colonial Government in Western Kenya had told the Bukusu men not to marry two wives. This kind of deliberate falsification of facts of history shares dint with what the British racist historian Audrey Wipper wrote in her book Rural Rabbles about Dini ya Musambwa by arguing that Dini ya Musambwa was emotional out-burst of its leaderElijah Masinde, whom she dismissed as a frustrated tribal lunatic under the influence of addiction to Marijuana. This can also be the point at which one can digress to take time and ask why eminent historians often make deliberate falsification of historical facts? like the way Professor Allan Elishah Adhiambo foolishly goofed by writing in the preface to Raila Odinga’s book Flame of Freedom that the Wanga Kingdom came from Luo’s Nyanza or in the same way the eminent British Historian Neil Fergusson similarly goofed by writing in his globally celebrated book Wars of the World that Nandi people live in Uganda and African countries were more developed economically during the time they were under colonialism than they are today.

One can only forgive Professor Allan Bethwell Ogot for making such mistakes in historical researches on the ground that he came to history when he was already an old man. Hehad already spent almost half of his adult life as a high school mathematics teacher. The truth is that Dini ya Musambwa was a well-organized guerrilla movement that combined both religious resistance, boycott of colonial labour and armed struggle to resist and fight British colonial brutality in Western Kenya, Eastern Uganda, Pokot, Nandi,Turkana, Sebey, Karamojong, Tabosa, Ateso and Samia Regions. The main philosophies that guided Dini ya Musambwa were; total disobedience to British colonialism, total rejection of European religion, Total refusal of forced labour, total respect for African culture and religion, total violence to all agents of colonialism, a hundred percent recovery of African land from hands of the whites who were land thieves, total protection of all the freedom fighters through traditional rituals, traditional prayers and actions .Thus, Professor Allan Bethwell Ogot had the intellectual Machinery and capital to research and establish these facts.

There are some well dedicated historians that easily established these facts that Allan Ogot could not see. For example, Fred Makila in his Out-line History of Babukusu,and as well as Gideon Saul We’re’ in his East African History Through a Thousand Years were able to establish proper revolutionary position and anti-colonial liberation struggle by Dini ya Musambwa. Professor Ali A. Mazrui in his two journals; Africa in the World Affairs and General History of Africa recurrently establishes Dini ya Musambwa as a well-organized struggle for freedom just like Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness by describing Elijah Masinde, its leader, as a replica of Aime Ceasaire in Africa. Taban Lo Liyongó in his Memoir Chrismas in Lodwar, describes Dini Ya Musambwaas very effective revolutionary movement that was never completed. Ngugi wa Thiongó, in some of his essays and narrative prose alludes to selfless life of Ellijah Masinde in leadership of Dini ya Mysambwa as an example of revolutionary praxis. History Professors; Simiyu Wandiba in his historical work on political personalities based on Masinde Muliro and also Professor Kisiang’ani in his recurrent works published as historical journalism by different media houses have properly articulated revolutionary position and anti-colonial struggle by Dini ya Musambwa in Political History of East Africa.

Dr. Godwin Siundu (University of Nairobi) eulogized Professor Allan Bethwell Ogot in culture pages of Saturday Nation on February 1st 2025 by pointing out that Professor Bethwell Allan Ogot was a victim of ethnic bigotry at the University of Nairobi. Dr Siundu narrated that, it was ethnic bigotry that made Jomo Kenyatta to appoint the under-qualified Njuguna Karanja by then a high school mathematics teacher without University Leadership experience to be the Vice Chancellor of University of Nairobi in the 70’s. Jomo Kenyatta did this in disfavour of Professor Betwell Allan Ogot who by then had long number of years as a University Professor at the University of Nairobi. Dr Siundu’s observations are contextually right, however Jomo Kenyatta was acting out of historical consciousness that during anti-colonial struggle the British used Allan Bethwell Ogot as a spy, to collect data on Mau-Mau fighters and inform the colonial government on the whereabouts of Mau-Mau fighters in Nairobi. This was the same snobbish culture which Professor Allan Bethwell Ogot practiced till the time of dictatorship in Kenya under tyrannical rule of Daniel Moi. Daniel Moi was a panicky dictator that practiced ruthless character assassination, detention without trial, torture at the torture chambers, suffocated freedom of the media and freedom of expression, communal torture by poverty and hunger, falsification of election results and all manner of dehumanizing political practices that forced Masinde Muliro, Matiba, Oginga Odinga, Marin Shikuku, Moseti Anyona,TitusAdongosi,Wafula Buke, Johnstone Kilobi, Saul Busolo and many other right thinking people to go on struggle against Moi’s misrule. In a very sharp contradistinction, this was the time Professor Bethwell Allan Ogot had rosy relationship with Daniel Moi, working for Moi in diverse capacities and in fact, Professor Allan Bethwell Ogot’s wife, the great African Writer and Author, Grace Ogot the author of Land Without Thunder and Promised Land conspicuously basked in the warm sunshine of political correctness as a powerful minister of culture and social services in Moi’s government, the government that was using Gestapo like Police terrorist machinery to frustrate and brutalize democratic loving people of Kenya.

Alexander Opicho writes from, Nairobi, Kenya