THE 1982 FAILED COUP D'ÉTAT IN KENYA (Failed Plan to overthrow The Moi Government)
A Thread 👇🏾
A Thread 👇🏾
It all started when a senior military officer became obsessed with being the president of Kenya. Senior Private Hezekiah Ochuka accepted the proposal to overthrow the government from his colleagues. He recruited some soldiers.
Ochuka had also managed to steal some military communication equipment which he had set up at a private house in Nairobi which was located a few kilometres from the city center.
In late July 1982, Ochuka held a secret meeting at football grounds near Umoja estate, at which details of how the coup was to be executed were discussed. Ochuka informed the attendees of how much support he had to execute the plan.
Their secret plan had already leaked to the wrong people but not enough action was taken in due time to prevent such occurrence.
On Sunday, 1 August 1982, at exactly 3 a.m, a group of soldiers from the Kenya Air Force took over Eastleigh Air Base. By 4 a.m, the nearby Embakasi air base had also been overtaken.
At 6 A.M. Senior Private Hezekiah Ochuka and Sergeant Pancras Oteyo Okumu captured the Voice of Kenya radio station in central Nairobi, from where they then broadcast in English and Swahili that the military had overthrown the government.
At that time, veteran radio presenter, Leonard Mambo Mbotela was working there. He gave a chilling narrative of how he was forced to announce to the nation that the Moi Government had been overthrown.
Working at the orders of Ochuka, Corporal Bramwel Injeni Njereman was leading a plot to bomb the State House and the General Service Unit headquarters from the Laikipia Air Base.
Corporal Njereman forced three pilots (Major David Mutua, Captain John Mugwanja, and Captain John Baraza) to fly two F-5E Tiger jets and a Strikemaster that would be used for the mission.
However, Major Mutua was aware that Corporal Njereman had never flown a jet fighter before and would likely not be able to cope with the g-forces. The pilots, while communicating on a secret channel, agreed to execute daring manoeuvres to disorient their captor. The trick worked.
The pilots dumped the bombs in Mt. Kenya forest and headed back to Nanyuki.
The coup was strategically planned to coincide with the war games taking place in Lodwar, when most of the army units and the senior leadership were away from Nairobi.
This meant that the senior-most officers present at the time were:
•Lieutenant General John Sawe (the Army Commander and Deputy Chief of the General Staff)
•Major General Mahmoud Mohamed (Sawe's deputy),
•Brigadier Bernard Kiilu (Chief of Operations at Defence Headquarters),
•Lieutenant General John Sawe (the Army Commander and Deputy Chief of the General Staff)
•Major General Mahmoud Mohamed (Sawe's deputy),
•Brigadier Bernard Kiilu (Chief of Operations at Defence Headquarters),
•Major Humphrey Njoroge (a staff officer in charge of training at Army Headquarters).
The four met and agreed that Major General Mahmoud Mohammed was to suppress the coup. He then assembled a team of about 30 officers from First Kenya Rifles Battalion and Kahawa barracks
The team stormed the broadcasting station and killed some of the rebel soldiers inside. Leonard Mbotela, was told to report that the rebels had been defeated and Moi was back in power.
With the help of the General Service Unit (GSU) and later the regular police, Mohamed gained control of Nairobi, causing the Air Force rebels to flee.
Hezekiah Ochuka, whose rank of Senior Private Grade-I was the second lowest in the military, claimed to rule Kenya for about six hours, then fleeing to Tanzania.After being extradited back to Kenya, he was tried and found guilty of leading the coup attempt. He was hanged in 1987
The coup was poorly organised hence it didn't go as planned.
The coup left more than 100 soldiers and perhaps 200 civilians dead, including several non-Kenyans. After the failed coup, the organizers were arrested and tried by court martial at the Army's Langata Barracks.
A total of twelve people were sentenced to death, and over 900 were jailed. The convicts who were hanged were buried at the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison.
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Correction: Hezekiah Ochuka was not a senior military officer
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