By Fredrick Odiero
Mr. John Awiti, a career educationist with a stellar resume, is winding down as a top policy official as the County Executive Committee Member (CECM) for education in Kisumu County.
It may have come as a surprise, Kisumu County Governor Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o trusting him with the docket having lost the Kisumu West parliamentary contest. The loss was honourable with slim margins, but a blessing in disguise.
He would soon be back on the tracks of mentorship and transformation of the young generation that he had trodden all his life. From this turn of events, he knew he was cut out for education, not the murky and treacherous tumult of politics.
“I still think the offer was a privilege since there are many people who could have been given the job,” he says as he reclines on his office seat.
His is a history of a roller coaster journey that started with bitter-sweet suspension from school. In Sawagongo High School, his amiable disposition found him on the wrong footing. He made best friends with the children of the resident teaching staff, leading to his immediate suspension.
So unpopular was the exclusion that the children demanded his reinstatement. The principal’s son in fact refused to eat.
“The child said he will not eat until their friend came back,” he says.
The principal had to launch a probe, resulting in his readmission. Whether it was the children’s action or the principal’s, he was motivated to like teaching even more.
At another time, when he was the principal of Rapogi High School, an otherwise smooth and comfortable life was almost disrupted by a small disciplinary matter.
He had been posted there as the principal from Olkejuado High School, where he had been deputy.
In a short time, he had turned around the school to become position 15 nationally in 1994, and a dormitory was named after him to crown his achievements.
Then something threw a spanner into the works.
An orphaned student suddenly went missing from school in 2008 during the thick of the post-election violence.
He had been thrown out of class over some minor disciplinary issue.
“The guardian came to inquire where ‘his son’ was even though I was not aware he was out of school,” he says.
As they learnt later after so much trouble, the student somehow had it in his mind to sneak out and steal money from his guardian’s pocket before proceeding to Nairobi.
Awiti says they later found him in the city after the chaos had subsided.
The CECM, who retired in 2017 as a chief principal at St Mary’s High school, Yala, has over the years left a mark wherever he has taught or headed.
He has been a teacher, master, deputy, Head Teacher, Principal, Senior Principal, and Chief Principal.
Apart from Rapogi High School where his career was on top gear, he also turned the tide in Kisumu Boys when two students topped the entire Nyanza Province.
At St Mary’s, it was not just about performance but elevating the school to a model status. He built an ultra-modern library where many other learning institutions came to benchmark.
“Somebody had whispered to me that if you want to put up a good library, then go to Mangu High school, which I did,” he says.
Initially, while at Olkejuado High School, he used to attend sports meetings due to his background in football, later giving him the opportunity to start attending Kenya Secondary School Heads Association (KESSHA) meetings at the district level.
This is the background that prepared him to become the provincial secretary and eventually the national chairman.
He was a top continental and global official at some point, assuming the position of Chairman of the African Confederation of Principals and also heading the global outfit.
But what had inspired his desire to join politics?
According to Awiti, it was not a desire for fame and money but a vision to fix education matters that he had traversed for decades.
The constituency was facing a lot of challenges with poor infrastructure at the core.
“I knew the challenges and problems which both parents and students were facing,” he says.
He also wanted to come up with a teacher training college in order to serve the local Obambo community, where he was born and bred.
But nothing has been lost; as the CECM for education a number of things have come to the fore.
He has managed to streamline bursary allocations and worked on gaps within the procurement system.
Infrastructure has now been clustered to deal with multiplicity so that one contractor does one project, thus ensuring there is efficiency in service delivery.
He has also pushed for students from the county to be absorbed into the Kenya Railways Marine Training School.
“Each Ward produces two students, one male and another female,” he says, adding that the graduands can be absorbed in the international job market.
Awiti says he was among the people who engineered the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC).
He however admits it is facing opposition because there was no adequate public participation from the onset.
“But the entire concept is indeed very good since it will remove the white collar job mentality,” he says.
Awiti was born in Obambo and went to the local primary school before switching to other schools.
After sitting his Certificate of Primary Education (CPE), he joined Sawagongo High School where he sat his ‘O’ and ‘A’levels, later proceeding to the University of Nairobi for his Bachelor of Education Degree.
His first posting was to Olkejuado High School in 1983 where he became the games master and deputy in quick succession.
He is at the moment working on a book detailing the history of KESSHA from its inception in 1962 to the present, having already authored a book titled The Head teacher and The Mechanics of Management, a resource manual for schools and college managers.
He says teaching is a calling that requires passion and a lot of discipline.
In 2014, he received a Presidential Award; Order of the Grand Warrior of Kenya in recognition of his immense contribution to education.
He holds a Master’s Degree in educational management and another in strategic management in education.
