Nixon Korir was considered an outsider who did not stand a chance of winning a political seat in an area that had been dominated by the opposition for decades.
In fact, his opponents in last year’s race for the Lang’ata parliamentary seat referred to him as a project of Deputy President William Ruto, a man who was considered the greatest political enemy of ODM leader Raila Odinga.
Raila had been Lang’ata MP — previously comprising Lang’ata and Kibera — for more than 20 years.
The young lawyer said through his foundation, Nixon Korir Foundation, he touched the hearts and souls of the most of the 130,572 voters in the constituency.
“Between 2013 and 2017, I managed to pay school fees for about 600 children in Lang’ata. I did this through personal donations and friends,” he says.
“There are so many unregistered community schools in Lang’ata. If you go to Highrise ward, you will get about 20 unregistered schools. If you go to Mugumoini ward, you will get about seven or eight of them. I helped children in these schools. I paid their fees,” he says.
He explains that he helped youth and women groups and developed personal relationships with them. He championed for integration and led a crusade against tribalism in the constituency.
“I managed to develop a personal relationship beyond tribe and party. That is why if you look at the votes I got in 2017, I got about 10,000 more than President Uhuru Kenyatta. So it is not the party votes, it is beyond party. Very many people today say I am good because I am not tribal,” he said.
Korir is a founding chairman of the former URP party, who at one time worked as DP Ruto’s personal assistant.
He won the seat in the August 8, 2017 election with 41,086 votes, beating ODM’s Oscar Omoke who garnered 39,593 votes.
Despite the ODM party having won all the four ward representative seats in the constituency, Korir says he has a good working relationship with all of them.
Despite being close to Ruto, a seasoned politician who rose from being a member of YK92 (a youth group that campaigned for former President Daniel Moi’s re-election in 1992), Korir says the DP did not step in Lang’ata to campaign for him.
Korir says many things were a mess when he took over, and he had to begin from basics.
“When Baba was the MP, he was a national figure, so he was very busy most of the time. When Joash Olum came, unfortunately, I don’t want to blame him, but very little was done in our schools. There were no chairs, cracks were all over and walls were not painted,” he says.
National Government Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF) committee is currently developing a five-year Strategic Plan running from 2018 to 2022.
Korir says the plan will entail his dream for the constituency and outline the projects and programmes for the period.
“This plan is organising my dream to community shared vision with specific objectives and projects that will drive us towards achieving our dream. Our vision therefore is guided by the Kenya 2010 constitution and vision 2030 whose overall goal is to give every Kenyan better living standard,” he says.