IN BONAYA GODANA AND HIS GREAT COMRADES, DEATH HAS LEFT US THE POORER.

This piece is dedicated to my friend of thirty years, Dr. Bonaya Godana and his comrades who perished with him in an air crash in Marsabit. As I mourn my friend together with his colleagues in the tragedy, I must not forget to send my deepest condolences to their beloved families, friends and the people of Eastern Province for whom they so ably provided leadership in trying moments.

The whole nation is united in this tragic moment of sorrow and loss.

As a Kenyan, I mourn the death of Godana the man I knew as a fellow student and a colleague I shared an apartment with in Spring Valley, Nairobi, twenty years ago.

I am forced to painfully remember our youthful moments in this valley when we both bought our first cars together. Godana had just returned from Switzerland while I had just joined the private sector. I remember how we used to struggle to drive our new cars in the early morning traffic that gave us less room, less sympathy and more scares and nightmares. At times we would take turns and take a ride in one another's cars with Dr. Mweu of the World Bank enjoying it all, while Prof. Oluoch Obura of Kenyatta University perfected our driving skills.

The Godana I knew was the epitome of humility, logic and controlled humour.

The Godana I knew was an intellectual of no mean repute yet he was never mesmerised by his achievements or academic credentials. He remained just Godana, our Godana.

For the 19 years Bonaya Godana was in politics, he never forgot his comrades of yester years. Even when he served in the Moi cabinet, Godana would never ignore and pretend not to know you like most politicians are tempted to do from time to time.

Godana was always Godana to all his friends.

In 2004, an international political organization organized a retreat for KANU top leadership in the North Coast of Mombasa. I was slated as one of the speakers at the same retreat. Godana, Dalmas Otieno and a host of other Kanu top brass were in attendance. When I arrived, the excitement in Godana's face was unbelievable. He spent the first five minutes teasing me, wondering aloud when I became a Kanu convert. I retorted humorously that as a consultant I was like a doctor or a priest- I cared more for my patients and less for their partisan beliefs. We laughed and I continued with my presentation.

As a person, Godana could be a very loyal friend and loyal to a cause to the extreme. His loyalty knew no bounds. At times I thought this blind loyalty bordered on the cynical.

Take the case of his relationship with Moi and Kanu; Bonaya Godana is probably one of the very few former Moi ministers that stuck with him through thick and thin in the tamultus days of the 2002 elections without as much as a flinch. When several cabinet ministers were jostling for this or that post in the party, he remained resolute, even detached. When rivalries sparked a series of fallouts in Kanu because of Uhuru Kenyatta, he remained faithful to his master Moi. And he did this to the final days of Moi in power.

After Kanu lost elections, Godana was one of the few people who took their loss in their strides. He accepted defeat and settled into the opposition with unusual ease.

He came to terms with his new status and resolved to play his role as an opposition MP and continued to contribute to the democratic process of the new Kenya.

After Moi left the scene and Uhuru became the chairman of Kanu, Bonaya Godana transferred his absolute loyalty to Uhuru Kenyatta. Where people found it necessary to pick bouts with Uhuru and even question his leadership, Godana remained a guarded faithful adviser to Uhuru Kenyatta on matters of political party leadership.

When Nicholas Biwott fought Uhuru in the Kanu elections and lost, prompting him to form a splinter group, Godana remained steadfast beside Uhuru to his death.

Armed with a sharp mind and trained legal expertise, Godana became the voice of reason in an otherwise chaotic Bomas Constitution Review Delegates Conference.

He never ever argued for the sake of arguing. He weighed his options before making his mind known on an issue.

Though the 9th Parliament has earned the notoriety of being dysfunctional, Bonaya Godana remained one of the few legislators who provided the rare sanity to the house.

In the era when it was most fashionable for politicians to defect, re-defect and form a multitude of political alliances, Godana would never hear of it. He entered into active politics through Kanu and for 19 years he remained a solid rock in Kanu.

When Godana finally died, the irony of fate finally made sure he died with Mirugi Kariuki, one of the people he opposed in parliament and at rallies during the 2005 referendum, yet remained his personal friend and even a sparring partner in endless television debates. Yet, we all recall that as acrimonious as the referendum campaign was, Godana was one of the fewest MPs that never uttered a word of abuse against his opponents. Godana had no time for hate speeches. He never preached negative ethnicity. He truly believed in brotherhood and one Kenya for all, his district of origin or tribe not withstanding.

Most of all, despite serving in the Moi cabinet most of his political career, he remained true to his beliefs of not engaging in rampant looting of public coffers.

Years after Kanu lost political power; Bonaya Godana remained one of the very few Cabinet ministers in the Moi regime that to date has never been associated with either old corruption or new corruption. The Ndungu and Goldenberg inquiries never touched this man.

As a person, he believed in order and the rule of law, the more reason it was natural for Uhuru Kenyatta to appoint him Deputy Leader of Opposition in Parliament, a position he held with a lot of dignity until his untimely demise.

As William Shakespeare once wrote in one of his famous plays, Julius Caesar, "The evil that men do live after them long after they are gone but the good that they do is always interred with them in the marrow of their bones".

May we remember Bonaya Godana and his comrades who died on a peace mission for what they stood for rather than the evil that they might have done. They lost their dear lives trying to save the lives of our brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers and our children.

May their death not be in vain.