Okoth Owiro is gone, who shall pick up his gauntlets?

Arthur Okoth Owiro was a prominent son of Sagam and a Professor of Law at the University of Nairobi. A sad loss.

This was featured in the East African Standard

By Dominic Odipo

The other week, the country and the University of Nairobi, in particular, lost a giant. Arthur Okoth-Owiro, the man who had taught Private Law at the university for quarter a century and who had served as the first secretary of the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission (CKRC), finally left us.

For those among us who knew him so well, Okoth’s death was a singular and devastating event. We take solace only in the fact that that is the way of all of us and that the Good Lord will receive him with open arms on the other side. May his soul rest in eternal peace.

Arthur Okoth-Owiro was the only man of his kind in this country. You can search the length and breadth of the entire country, but you will not find another quite like him.

His birthplace of Ahono, Gem in Siaya District combined with Sawagongo Secondary School, Alliance High School and the University of Nairobi to produce a unique human species. There are very few people who ever met Okoth-Owiro and forgot the experience. His impression, like that of all strong men, always remained behind, sometimes favourable and sometimes highly unfavourable. Here was a man whom neither his friends nor foes could totally ignore.

Okoth was a giant not only in the physical sense, but also in the social and intellectual sphere. He lived his half century to the full, ignoring the vaunted moderation of the ancient Greeks and testing life’s limits like few among us could dare. Very often, he pitted his intellectual arsenal against the very best Nairobi University could offer and came out tops. As it has been well put elsewhere, Okoth was a man who had all the characteristics of the human race.

Turbulent and often unpredictably spontaneous, he was selectively generous, often lavishing full attention and the fruits of his many labours on a select few and denying them completely to others. That Okoth drank the full measure of his glass of life, no one who knew him can deny. He loved his red wine and his Johnny Walker and would often consume enormous volumes of both. He loved the company of his fellow human beings, both male and female.

He loved African music, especially the big band sound of Congolese maestro Franco and his TP OK Jazz. He adored the solo vocals of Carlito Lassa (Affaire Kitikwala), Sam Mangwana, Malage de Lugendo (Testament ya Bowule) and the superb duets of Franco and Youlou Mabiala (Infidelite Mado) and Franco and Sam Mangwana (Cooperation, Toyeba Yo.)

On the local scene, he reserved a special place in his musical soul for Okatch Biggy, like him, a native of Gem. After Okatch passed on, he transferred his affection to those musicians who had learned at Okatch’s feet. As if in reciprocation of his love for their art, these musicians generously included his name in their lyrics.

Those of us who knew Okoth well will remember him, not for his red wine or generous love of humanity, but for his withering wit and for what we used to call his cut-throat intelligence. With one quick, pithy retort, Okoth could cut down any man or woman in an intellectual exchange. He could do this to students, fellow lecturers, professors and journalists alike.

Unfortunately, this cut-throat wit was not always doled out judiciously. Many of his friends and university colleagues often ended up at the sharp end of it. So it happened that, often, when he needed the backing of his friends or colleagues, he found it vapourised by some defunct, but devastatingly witty remark long gone from his own memory.

When, during the mid-1980s, the University of Nairobi found itself with a vice chancellor and a law dean who were both Kamba, Okoth suddenly found the university "too Kambasome". Commenting on the standard of the lawyers being produced by the university, he said: "You know most of the students who later become lawyers in this town only manage pass degrees. That means they only know about 40 per cent of the law."

There are many of his former colleagues who will swear that Okoth was incorrigibly arrogant. That he had a rather inflated opinion of himself. Are they correct? Indeed, they are. But this arrogance and highly inflated sense of self-esteem turned out to be one of his greatest assets.

In a huge, public university setting in which one must publish or perish, a huge intellectual ego can be very useful indeed. You must prove by what you publish and do that you are indeed superior to your peers. In the end, what starts out as a vice becomes the engine through which you develop all your potential and end up dominating your colleagues even more.

And this, in effect, is what happened to Okoth towards the sunset of his life. Believing deep within that he was inherently superior to his colleagues, he put in his name for secretary of the CKRC and, without canvassing, promptly got the job. Arrogance, whether intellectual or not, had clearly paid off.

Unfortunately, this hour of his greatest triumph also turned out to be the beginning of the end. Hardly six months into the job, he lost the support of virtually all his fellow commissioners.

When he was finally forced to resign, deep within, he knew that having reached the top of his mountain he would never actually see the Promised Land.

And so when the cruel hand of fate struck the other week, Okoth knew it was coming. He had certainly adjusted himself for the consequences, so far as it is humanly possible to do so. He fought the unequal battle with courage and fortitude to the very end, refusing to capitulate meekly to this mightiest of the forces of Providence.

It is on this note that we say farewell to our brother and friend of so many memorable years and wish him the very best that there may be in the world beyond the grave.

Good bye, Rabet.