The young man who defied the President’s security detail and asked for a job from the Head of State last month, is now on the government payroll. Mr Philemon Agwanda, 28, is an employee of the ministry of Public Service, Youth and Gender Affairs.
Mr Agwanda said he was hired on the same week the media carried the story of how he braved the presidential security detail and gave President Uhuru Kenyatta his phone number.
“They placed me somewhere,” he told the Sunday Nation on phone.
Asked which assignment he had been given and where he had been posted, he replied, “Si sasa tu ikuwe kwa youth service hivo? Nina prefer ikuwe hivyo (Won’t you just let it be that I am in youth service? I prefer it that way).”
Pressed further, he said he is at the youth department. “I’m enjoying it. But you know there are things I wouldn’t wish to share at the moment,” said Mr Agwanda. “I thank the President for putting me somewhere.”
As Mr Kenyatta’s convoy crossed Kisumu’s Obunga slum on February 7, Mr Agwanda called out to the President at the top of his voice and caught his attention. To his surprise, Mr Kenyatta asked him to write down his phone number.
Four hours later, he received a call from State House. He then explained to Mr Kenyatta that he had not found a job since leaving university.
Later, Mr Agwanda was asked to send his CV to Ms Sicily Kariuki, the Cabinet Secretary for Public Service, Youth and Gender Affairs.
He said he travelled to Nairobi on a Thursday and that the next day he had his letter of employment.
Mr Agwanda’s is but a page in the book of stories on people who have used unorthodox means to catch the President’s attention.
In the 1980s, Bethuel Mbugua pulled a similar, if not more daring, feat. He was then an eight-year-old boy in primary school and he wanted to talk to President Daniel arap Moi.
Young Mbugua had taken instructions from his father and, on a cue, he dashed to the dais where Mr Moi was seated.
The then Vice President Mwai Kibaki ordered the security personnel not to drag back the lad. A photo of Mbugua talking to Mr Moi was all the rage in the next day’s newspapers.
That was the moment Mbugua had his claim to fame, and henceforth the country came to know of a boy many considered a genius; who left many in awe for his aptitude in complex biological concepts.
Though it was later announced that he failed an IQ test, Mbugua would travel to the United States for studies and later got a master’s degree in public health.
