Leadership wrangles in the country’s second largest teacher union, the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET), is taking new twists every day, with its Migori Executive Secretary Samuel Orwa Jasolo maintaining that he will go for a national seat in 2026 despite the ongoing intimidations from the union top leadership.
According to Jasolo, the union should focus on making the welfare of teachers even better and keeping the employer Teachers Service Commission (TSC) and other entities in check instead of blackmailing its officials.
“KUPPET is a union that should be focussed on fighting for a better welfare for teachers and most importantly, keeping the excesses of employers in check. Instead the union leadership seems to have turned to cowardly blackmail tactics meant to silence internal critics and would-be competitors,” said Jasolo.
“Today, anyone who thinks differently, or who dares to dream of running for a national seat is quickly marked ‘Enemy of the Union’, bloggers always on the ready, set in, mudslinging is the name of the game as blackmail and intimidation become the new normal,” he added.
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Jasolo noted that teachers are tired of divisive tactics and that it is time they all rose to demand for an accountable leadership so that the union may go back to professional, issue-based politics, vowing to continue with his dream of contesting for a national seat come 2026.
“The National Advisory Council, the National Governing Council (NGC) must step in and demand that the National Executive Board (NEB) focusses on addressing the key concerns of the classroom teacher rather than engaging in unhelpful constant internal wars. It is laughable that today Jasolo is accused of having authored and circulated the fake resignation letter – a letter that I know nothing about,” he said.
“We know the panic has set in on NEB as 2026 approaches. Now that teachers are seeing through the lies, they’ve resorted to wild allegations of forgery in an attempt to block some of us from 2026 elections. Let me assure the teachers in this country that nothing will stop my resolve to run for a national seat as teachers deserve better (leadership). This union must return to its rightful purpose,” reiterated Jasolo.
His sentiments come after it emerged that the union top leadership has summoned three top officials: Jasolo, the union National Assistant Treasurer Ronald Tonui, and National Secretary Tertiary Sammy Chelang’a, to appear before its Disciplinary Committee next Friday, October 11, 2024.
The three have been summoned through letters signed by the Union Secretary General Akelo Misori to face interrogations over allegations of authoring and circulating a fake resignation letter by Misori.
By Roy Hezron
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