Moi had just been in office for 4 years which is roughly close to a single presidential term of 5 years by the old or new constitution. His performance had been shoddy and thus his removal was justifiable by whichever means necessary. Had a young Business orientated educated young chap taken over Kenya in 1982 such as Mwai Kibaki or Robert Ouko saa hii tungekuwa na factory ya ndege Nairobi na 3 local car brands.
Have you stopped to think that may be the unsuccessful coup was actually a blessing. People who could not organise a successful coup were most probably too disorgased to lead a country
The 1982 coup was a fake coup.
Moi was told several months earlier that the coup was going to happen. Air Force commander Maj Gen Kariuki offered to arrest the coup plotters. Moi refused to let him. All this was documented in a Daily Nation report.
Moi wanted the coup to go ahead so he could use it as an excuse to purge Jomo Kenyatta appointees. First to be shown the door was Maj Gen Kariuki and every senior Air Force officer of whom none had anything to do with the coup. Some like former Police commander Hinga were sent to Kamiti Maximum.
Further Moi wanted the coup to happen so he could justify banning all political parties which he had done 2 months earlier. He also wanted to justify detaining opposition figures without trial. After the coup, many opposition figures found themselves at Kamiti sometimes for years.
University students and professors who were considered firebrands were also detained. Some were lucky to escape the country before they were arrested. Professor Micere Mugo escaped to Zimbabwe and actually lost her Kenya citizenship . Unlucky students who could not escape included firebrand SONU leader Tito Adungosi who was jailed and died mysteriously in prison.
The coup plotters were cheated ati the army was also going to join in the coup. They were shocked when army started shooting at them.
Finally, no Airforce has ever staged a successful military coup. In fact when senior army officers heard that Airforce were staging a coup, they were laughing. If you go on YouTube and look at the video of Moi addressing the country after the coup, you can see a smirk on his face.
Moi used coup pretext to purge all GEMA people from the armed forces. From then onwards, 90% of army recruits were from Kalenjin, to the extent that being in the army from the other tribes became prestigious, yaani mtu wa kutajika.
The man credited with organising the coup, private Ochuka, was too junior and inexperienced that I think he was just a proxy. I guess he wondered why he was being hanged when time came. Sometimes I think the whole thing was planned by Moi and Oginga Odinga in order to purge Kikuyus.
How would Oginga Odinga have benefited from purging Kikuyus or from the coup?
He was in the opposition and his party had been banned. Furthermore RAO was put in detention at a time when many people died in detention. Some like Matiba lost their sanity. Those who were lucky to escape the country never came back for decades.