OPINION: Dear millennials, it’s up to you…

If you take a stroll down the Central Business District of Nairobi, you will find, just a few meters from the National Archives, a monument in honor of one of our nation’s most remarkable heroes.

Handcrafted by the highly-gifted late sculptor, Oshottoe Ondula, the monument depicts a handsome, smiling man gazing coolly into the horizon, right arm outstretched as if in friendly exhortation. He is dressed in the flowing West African agbada highly favored across the continent by stylish gentlemen of a certain social stratum. A plaque on one side of the monument's glossy façade reads: ‘Shujaa Thomas Joseph Odhiambo Mboya, 1930-1969.’

A few weeks ago, in what was almost certainly an award-worthy snapshot, a photojournalist captured a striking image of the famous statue. In the photo, Mboya’s sculpted face is seen partially obscured by a somewhat tatty facemask and tight anti-teargas goggles; a black backpack hangs oddly over his right shoulder while a water bottle and empty teargas canister dangle from his outstretched hand. Tied to his arm, and printed in capital letters, a large placard announces: ‘Reject, Not Amend.’ The photo, captured at the height of Kenya’s fiery anti-Finance Bill protests, was a resounding message from our thoroughly exasperated ‘Gen Zs.’

Tom Mboya was born on August 15th, 1930, at a sisal plantation near present-day Thika. He was the eldest child of Leonardus and Marcella Ndiege, both of whom worked as farm laborers for colonial settler Sir William McMillan on his expansive estate. When Mboya was 9 years of age, Ndiege sent him off to school, choosing Kabaa Mission School in Machakos for him. Here, young Mboya would take his first classes under the sparse branches of rugged trees and trace his ABCs with dry sticks on the ground.

When Mboya was 12, his father transferred him to a school in Nyanza, the family’s ancestral province. But the long distance meant that the boy could only visit his parents and siblings every three months. Years later, writing in the March 1959 edition of ‘Africa Today,’ Mboya would share some of his struggles as a school-going lad: “Sometimes I made the 3-day journey back to the plantation where my father worked by train, and at other times I walked 72 miles (115km) a day, from dawn to nightfall, with no food to my location [rural family home]...”

Mboya eventually had to drop out after completing secondary school, as his father could not afford to take his education any further while also paying fees for the younger children. He thus gave up the prospect of studying the Cambridge A levels and proceeded to train as a sanitary inspector at the age of 18. It is perhaps no wonder that he would later become extraordinarily passionate about providing students with good education opportunities.

Mboya was, by all accounts, an exceptionally charming and debonair young man; he was also endowed with a masterful command of language and possessed the fine oratory skill that has forged many a successful political career. This, combined with his undeniable brilliance, endeared him to audiences across the globe.

Unsurprisingly, then, while on a trip to America in April 1959, Mboya would find a keenly attentive audience in a select group of well-respected luminaries. Vice President Richard Nixon would grant him an hour-long sit-down at the Department of State in the nation’s capital; Senator John F. Kennedy would host him at his family’s lavish waterfront home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. The world’s first black Nobel Laureate, Ralph Bunche, would arrange a sumptuous luncheon at the compound of the United Nations, and investment banker David Rockefeller, of the billionaire Rockefeller family, would host an elegant dinner in his honor.

But he had not traveled to the United States for his own benefit.

Having recently been elected Nairobi’s representative to the country’s legislature, LegCo, and knowing that most young Africans lacked proper opportunities for higher education, Mboya had traveled to the US for a very specific purpose - to seek university scholarships for his fellow Kenyans. His trip was a resounding success. The five grueling weeks he spent crisscrossing the US realized enough funds to send close to 100 students to both America and Canada. And in September 1959, barely three months after his trip, 81 enthusiastic young Kenyans were airlifted by a chartered flight to New York to begin their studies. Mboya had met his goal.

A year later, Mboya would be featured on the cover of the world-famous Time Magazine. Beneath his image, the words “Circulation of over 3,000,000” would indicate a staggeringly large audience at a time when the 10-word telegram was the chief means of cross-border communication and Twitter was fifty years in the future. His face was now recognizable worldwide. There was greatness in this man.

Meanwhile, among the students was a stunning beauty named Pamela Odede, daughter of former LegCo member Walter Fanuel Odede. She would soon become Mboya’s bride. A beautiful photo of the courting love birds, reportedly shot while on a visit to Rusinga Island, shows the shy bride-to-be reposing lovingly in the arms of the ever-spiffy Mboya. And a well-preserved newspaper clipping dated May 2, 1960, announces to all: “Pamela Odede, an exchange student at Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio, is engaged to marry Tom Mboya, dynamic, native leader of Kenya, Africa.” A few hearts must surely have been broken.

By 1960, only a year after the first airlift, US universities had become quite keen to have African students on board. However, even though the institutions provided much-needed scholarships, prospective students still had to raise their airfare, presenting Mboya with an unexpected dilemma. Quite fortunately, Mboya had by this time forged a close brotherly friendship with a wealthy 33-year-old American industrialist, William X Scheinman, who had been an enthusiastic participant in the first airlift and was eager to see the next phase succeed. So, in July 1960, Scheinman provisioned his personal jet and flew Mboya to Cape Cod, Massachusetts for a private meeting with Senator John F. Kennedy. At stake was the future of another 250 students.

Kennedy meanwhile was now running for US president and had emerged as the frontrunner for the Democratic Party. After a series of vigorous discussions with Mboya and his team, the Senator agreed to grant USD 100,000 to Mboya’s project - a tidy sum in those days - drawing the funds from his family’s well-endowed charity. But, despite Kennedy’s admirable efforts to remain an anonymous donor, a deluge of publicity quickly ensued. Being an election year, all eyes were on the two contending presidential candidates and some of the Senator’s opponents attempted to paint his donation as a hollow campaign gimmick. But the publicity only worked in the Senator’s favor.

The African American community, in particular, had become well-informed of Kennedy’s role in helping the African students, and this, some say, may have tipped the balance in the elections that year. Kennedy bagged 68 percent of the community’s vote, upping his margin in an extremely tight race, and went on to become the 35th president of the United States.

Mboya’s airlifts carried on until 1963 and eventually enabled at least 750 Kenyans to earn a higher education abroad. But perhaps the true measure of his brainchild’s success was the fact that many later returned to take up crucial roles in post-colonial Kenya, as he had hoped.

Some of those airlifted were: renowned academic and diplomat Prof. Washington Aggrey Okumu, who at the time of the 1959 airlift was aged 23; future Nobel Prize Laureate Prof. Wangari Maathai who was aged 20 in 1960; Nobel Peace Prize nominee Prof. Miriam Were, also aged 20 in 1960; Kenya’s sixth vice president Prof. George Saitoti, aged 18 during the 1963 airlift; highly-respected journalist and literary titan Philip Ochieng, aged 22 in 1960, and Mutu Gethoi, senior radio journalist and later official biographer of Njenga Karume and Jeremiah Kierieni, among several other illustrious Kenyans.

In studying great men and women, I have become fully persuaded that in every generation, greatness is deposited, by the Almighty, in a handful of chosen vessels who go on to shake our world with the plans He has so diligently crafted for us. Mboya in my view was one such vessel.

A letter written to him in the 1950’s by his friend Scheinman puts it thus: “History has placed a particularly heavy burden on your shoulders, because it would seem that the manner in which the situation in Kenya works out will also determine the future of all of East, Central, and South Africa...”

Mboya’s powerful legacy is a truly admirable testament to a lad who once had to walk more than 100km to get home for his school holidays. But the afternoon of Saturday, 5th July 1969 will forever be stamped in our nation’s collective memory, for it was on this day and hour that the life of Thomas Joseph Odhiambo Mboya was suddenly snuffed out, way too soon, by an assassin's bullet. Mboya was killed as he unsuspectingly stepped out of a pharmacy along present-day Moi Avenue, just a few weeks before his 39th birthday. His monument stands just a few meters from where he met his death.

Earlier this year, unrelenting taxation and devastating robbery of our nation’s coffers drove a protesting Gen Z generation livid, onto that very street. The young protesters undoubtedly carried the sentiments of citizens long tired, nay, exhausted, by never-ending corruption and numerous scandals, such as the Ksh.1.2 billion allegedly nicked from the NSSF, a corporation that Mboya had helped establish. And so, in true Gen Z fashion, our hero was promptly adorned with a facemask and goggles, symbolically enjoining him in the struggle.

Perhaps what is needed, many now believe, is a complete overhaul of our system of governance; one that can only be effected by a generation of young, corruption-intolerant, tribe-free Kenyans reminiscent of Mboya and similar independence-era leaders.

Mboya was just 28 years old when he almost single-handedly established the hugely successful airlift program that transformed the lives of hundreds of Kenyans, and helped mould the future of our country. Had he been born just about half a century later and been alive in our current time, no doubt he would have been an outstanding member of the generation, known today as Millennials, who were born between 1981 and 1996 and are presently aged 28 to 43.

It is worth noting, too, that Kenya’s first post-independence cabinet included several leaders in their 30s and early 40s. Even though they were by no means perfect, these and other youthful leaders made tremendous contributions to our nation's advancement. Their youthful enthusiasm and earnest idealism were crucial in helping reset the antiquated and highly reprehensible colonial system. And in recent weeks, as the discourse on our nation’s myriad afflictions has continued to persist, it has become abundantly clear that our current paradigm must most assuredly shift.

So, go right ahead and take one step forward if you are of the feisty and much-loved Gen Z age bracket. But take two bold ones if you’re a Millennial. The time for your generation to serve our nation has come.

[Paulie Mugure Mugo is a published author and a co-founder of Eagles Leadership Network (ELN), an initiative that trains and equips upcoming leaders in the area of ethical governance.]