George Saitoti was created on 3 August 1945 and introduced in Maasailand, where he spent his childhood herding cattle using the Masai culture, go to school. He attended Ololua Primary School, Kajiado where he acquired his fundamental education within the 1950s. Between 1960 and 1963, he guaranteed a location at Mang’u Senior High School in Thika where he achieved his senior high school education. He became a member of the ranks of Mang’u High School’s highly decorated alumni including Kenya’s third President, Mwai Kibaki, former Vice-President Moody Awori, Catholic Archbishop Ndingi Mwana-a-Nzeki, the late Atmosphere Minister John Michuki, the late Trade Unionist and former Minister for Justice and Constitutional Matters, Tom Mboya, and late Cardinal Maurice Michael Otunga. Saitoti spent a short whilst in the Usa, where he received his undergraduate education at Brandeis College between 1963 and 1967. Throughout his time there, he was around the esteemed Wien Scholarship, specialising in Mathematics and Financial aspects. His colleagues at that time keep in mind that he enjoyed spending some time in Cholmondeleys (the coffeehouse within the Castle) and excelled at high jump, ranking among the very best in Colonial. In 1988, Saitoti received the very first Brandeis Alumni Achievement Award, the greatest honor the College bestows upon its graduates.
Saitoti later gone to live in the Uk where he acquired an expert of Science (MSc) degree in Mathematics in the College of Sussex, Brighton. He enrolled for his doctorate studies in the College of Warwick where he finally acquired his PhD in Mathematics in 1972 writing his dissertation underneath the supervision of Professor Luke Hodgkin in algebraic topology underneath the subject: Mod-2 K-Theory from the Second Iterated Loop Space on the Sphere.

Upon his graduation, Saitoti came back to Kenya in 1972, commencing work like a Mathematics lecturer in the College of Nairobi. Certainly one of his contributions was the institutionalisation of Mathematics like a discipline in Africa. Throughout the first Pan-African Conference of Mathematicians locked in Rabat, The other agents in 1976, Saitoti was active in the development of the African Mathematical Union (AMU). He was elected the AMU’s Vice-President, a publish that they held on as much as 1979. By 1983, Saitoti’s academic career was increasing as affiliate professor and Mind from the Mathematics Department. Outdoors the academy, Saitoti received several public appointments. On 3 November 1972, the Minister of Work hired him because the chairman from the Farming Wages Council (AWC). On 4 September 1979, the Minister for Tourism and Wildlife, John Ogutu, also hired him like a committee person in natural Sciences Advisory Research Committee (TNSARC) chaired by Professor S. O. Wandiga. In September 1983, he was hired chair from the board of company directors for that Rift Valley Institute of Science. Also, he offered in other public capacities as chairman of Mumias Sugar Company and also the Kenya Commercial Bank.
Top decision-makers in government had recognize Saitoti like a policy thinker and technocrat, who the KANU anxiously required to fix its institutions, politics and also the economy. His seminal book, The Difficulties of monetary and Institutional Reforms in Africa was broadly recognized by leading officials as supplying practical policy proposals to handle the various challenges facing Kenya and Africa.

It came from Saitoti’s experience like a seasoned scholar, consultant and experienced policy-maker/thinker, presenting an extensive and multidisciplinary analysis of techniques for poverty alleviation, sustainable development, poverty reduction, combating Aids/AIDS and peace diplomacy. Saitoti also emphasised the significance of institutional reforms and seem public policies to sustainable economic development in Africa.
In October 1983, President Daniel arap Moi nominated Saitoti as part of parliament and subsequently hired him towards the Cabinet as Minister for Finance. He held the positioning until 1989. Throughout the 1988 general elections, Saitoti required the plunge into competitive politics and won the Kajiado North parliamentary seat which was previous held by Philip Odupoy. Before the tenure of Adupoy and Saitoti, the Kajiado North multi-ethnic constituency occured through the popular politician, John Keen, another half-Maasai who champion a nationalist vision and labored through the years to guarantee the growth of his mother’s people. For more than twenty-5 years, Professor George Saitoti has symbolized Kajiado North since 1988, recapturing the seat in consecutive elections in 1992, 1997, 2002 and 2007. Building on John Keen’s legacy of the cosmopolitan constituency, Saitoti transformed Kajiado North into Kenya’s most ethnically integrated multi-ethnic legislative area which provided a secure haven to Kenyans, intentionally displaced through the 1991–2008 cycles of ethnic violence in neighbouring areas.
The region can also be rated one of the top wealthiest, economically dynamic and fastest growing regions in Kenya. Based on figures released through the Government of Kenya in ’09, Kajiado North has already established a typical poverty index of 10.66 percent during the last 3 years, which makes it among the wealthiest constituencies in Kenya
Following the 1988 General Election, President Moi hired Saitoti as Kenya’s sixth Vice-President. Saitoti grew to become Kenya’s longest sitting vice-president serving for 13 years under President Daniel arap Moi between May 1989 and December 1997 having a break between 1997 and 1999 and again between April 1999 and August 2002. Simultaneously, he offered as Minister for Finance. In 1990–1991, Saitoti was the manager Chairman around the globe Bank and also the Worldwide Financial Fund (IMF). In 1999–2000, Saitoti also offered as president from the African, Caribbean and Off-shore Number of States, becoming instrumental in assisting negotiate a brand new development partnership agreement to achieve success the prior Lom Convention that expired in Feb 2000 between your ACP and also the Eu. The hallmarks of Saitoti tenure as Vice-President were efficiency, sobriety and loyalty as President Moi’s most reliable lieutenant. Even if President Moi dithered in naming a brand new deputy following the 1997 elections, Saitoti was still being his preferred choice 14 several weeks lower the road. Exactly the same traits of efficiency, persistence and loyalty will make him certainly one of President Mwai Kibaki’s reliable Ministers.
When Saitoti was hired Vice-President in May 1989, KANU was back-peddling on re-democratizing the nation. Simultaneously, the party was fragmented within the succession divide from a sit-tight “KANU-A” along with a more pro-change “KANU-B” brought by Saitoti. The brand new Vice-President was, therefore, compelled just to walk the tight rope between to be the face of alternation in the ruling Party and remaining faithful to his principal who, after re-election as President in 1988, had amended the metabolic rate to improve his capacity to dismiss idol judges and widened police forces. On New Year’s Day 1990, the vocal cleric, Rev. Timothy Njoya, known as on all Africans to have to have a multiparty system of presidency. Following a Saba Saba riots in 7 This summer 1990, President Moi announced the development from the KANU Review Committee underneath the chairmanship of Prof George Saitoti typically referred to as the Saitoti Committee .

The Saitoti Review Committee was mandated to research the party’s internal electoral and disciplinary conduct. The committee traversed the nation collecting people’s opinions around the party, astounding foe, friend and critics alike and supplying a rare forum for direct critique and outbursts. In The month of january 1991, KANU’s executive committee adopted the recommendations by George Saitoti, that critics from the party cease being expelled but suspended for a couple of years.
The advice from the report were open for debate throughout the National Delegates Conference at Karasani in Nairobi. President Moi backed the adoption and implementation from the report in toto. against what many loudspeakers in the conference had expected. This opened up the reforms gates, eventually setting happens for that repeal of Section 2A in 1991 that came back Kenya to to a multiparty system of presidency. The Saitoti Review Committee thrust the party around the reform path, but additionally widened internal ideological schisms between “KANU-A” conservatives and “KANU-B” pro-reformers within the Moi succession question.
Saitoti was at the attention of the nasty succession storm that rocked KANU pre and post the 1997 elections. Maasai purists brought by Minister William Ole Ntimama and senior Maasai elders Are-Kikuyunized’ Saitoti’s dual ancestry, amplifying his Kikuyu family linkages like a plan to weaken his political base and also to challenged his status like a Maasai elder. Despite his steadfast loyalty to KANU and President Moi, Saitoti was frequently overlooked, humiliated and annoyed by the party and it is top echelons. Around the same time frame Foreign Matters Minister Robert Ouko was murdered in Feb 1990, Saitoti claims that attempts were created on his existence. Following the 1997 general elections, he was dropped as Vice-President, although no substitute was hired. Even while President Moi reappointed him in April 1999, around the roadside in Limuru, Kiambu he earned a scathing remark towards the effect that: “I have returned Prof Saitoti the seat of Vice-President, hopefully now your sufurias (containers) is going to be filled with food.” Several weeks prior to the general elections of 2002, Saitoti’s name was deleted in the listing of KANU delegates and the ascendancy towards the presidency blocked by ‘unknown’ party people. On 18 March 2002, when KANU held its national delegates conference in the Kasarani sports complex, the proceed to block Saitoti in the succession game was manifest. The meeting amended the party metabolic rate to match the merger between KANU and Raila Odinga’s National Development Party (NDP) to produce the “New KANU”. It introduced four new positions of party Vice-Chairmen mainly to water lower Saitoti’s position as Vice-President and Moi’s probably successor as president.
It had been obvious that Moi didn’t even want him among the four vice-chairmen posts restricted to Uhuru Kenyatta, Kalonzo Musyoka, Katana Ngala and Musalia Mudavadi. Moi told Saitoti to his face he wasn’t “presidential material.” Like a “Maasai-Kikuyu,” Saitoti lacked the ethnic figures he necessary for the political horse-buying and selling in Moi’s power game. Rather, Moi finger-pointed as his heir Uhuru Kenyatta, perceived to possess a large ethnic base like a pure-bred Kikuyu using the “Kenyatta” mystique. Saitoti gracefully bowed from the race, living to battle a later date. Although not without his famous line: There comes a period when the country is a lot more important than a person. However the KANU-NDP marriage found a tragic finish when Moi named Uhuru instead of Raila Odinga as his successor. In August 2002, Odinga left KANU to defeat Moi’s “use and dump game,” and became a member of several KANU rebels” coalesced round the “Rainbow Alliance” lobby that later transformed itself in to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Saitoti also walking from KANU and grew to become a vital LDP figure. In October 2002, LDP became a member of the nation’s Alliance of Kenya (NAK) of Mwai Kibaki, Charitable organization Ngilu and Wamalwa Kijana to create the nation’s Rainbow Coalition (NARC). Saitoti grew to become part of the NARC Summit, the greatest organ from the coalition.
Once the NARC flag-bearer, Mwai Kibaki, decisively defeated KANU and Uhuru Kenyatta, Saitoti was hired towards the Secretary of state for Education. He was the person responsible for applying NARC’s flagship and globally acclaimed free primary education in Kenya
After 2004, because the NARC consensus crumbled, Saitoti left the agitating LDP camp and put his lot behind President Kibaki. He canvassed for that government-backed draft Metabolic rate, which lost to some combined KANU-LDP campaign throughout the November 2005 referendum. Throughout the 2007 elections, Saitoti defended his Kajiado North parliamentary seat around the Party of National Unity (PNU) ticket, Kibaki’s re-election vehicle, launched three several weeks towards the election on 16 September 2007. The courts purchased a election recount in Kajiado North, but Saitoti beat his nearest competitor, Moses Ole Sakuda with near to 20,000 votes. Saitoti blamed his re-election glitch on intrigues of power by KANU forces inside the PNU campaign which underwrote his rivals to knock him from politics and potentially from the 2012 Presidential elections. But he’d continued to be reticent about this.
Saitoti’s traits of persistence, efficiency and loyalty to Kibaki compensated off. On 8 The month of january 2008, he was hired Minister of Condition for Internal Security and Provincial Administration at work from the President, a situation formerly occupied with a Kibaki confidant, John Michuki. Saitoti retained the interior Security docket despite President Kibaki and Pm Raila Odinga established the ability-discussing government that ended the 2008 publish-election crisis. Between October 2010 and August 2011, Saitoti was hired Minister for Foreign Matters with an acting capacity following the incumbent, Moses Wetangula, walked aside to permit investigations on alleged corruption
In This summer 2009, Saitoti was hired to mind a unique cabinet sub-committee created to supervise the matters from the Worldwide Court Arrest (ICC) in Kenya. People of the bi-partisan committee include Saitoti, Mutula Kilonzo and Moses Wetangula (PNU) and James Orengo, Otieno Kajwang and Amason Kingi (ODM). (Carrying out a cabinet reshuffle in April 2012, Eugene Wamalwa and Prof. Mike Ongeri have replaced Kilonzo and Wetangula). The function from the sub-Committee like a liaison and co-ordination body between your ICC and also the Kenyan government required a middle-stage from December 2010 once the ICC Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, indicted six prominent Kenyans for alleged crimes against humanity concerning the 2008 publish-election violence.
Because the Minister of Internal Security and also the chairman from the Cabinet Sub-committee on ICC and security matters, Saitoti may be the guarantor from the government’s dedication to the ICC process. As a result of this, several analysts have claimed the suspects’ fate lie using the sub-committee. Saitoti arrived on the scene strongly criticising the invocation of President Kibaki within the ICC debate, with sobriety from politicians. Saitoti has maintained a legitimate interpretation on if the suspects can vie for presidency within the coming elections, stressing that just the metabolic rate can bar or allow them to liberated to go into the race.
On 19 December 2008, President Mwai Kibaki who had been unanimously endorsed as Party Leader in the PNU National Delegates Conference (NDC) held at Kasarani sports complex in Nairobi. In compliance using the Political Parties Act (2008), Saitoti was elected PNU chairman, becoming the 2nd-in-command within the party hierarchy since he lost as KANU Vice-President within the fight for that Moi succession in March 2002. His elevation, however, complicated coalition politics and elevated the stakes for that Kibaki succession in PNU. Other presidential hopefuls, Uhuru Kenyatta and Kalonzo Musyoka, shunned the party and launched into consolidating their particular parties. In November 2010, Musyoka, Kenyatta and Saitoti signed a protocol to create and transform the PNU Alliance right into a common political vehicle for that 2013 presidential race. However the important to adhere to the Political Parties Act (2011) forced these to abandon the Alliance and shift focus on their particular parties.

Saitoti was both Vice-President and Finance Minister in the height from the 1991–1993 Goldenberg scandal. Despite the fact that their own culpability within the mega fraud has not been established, for many years the Goldenberg is just about the proverbial Sword of Damocles used against Saitoti in intra-elite power wars. At the begining of 1999, Raila Odinga like a presidential contender to achieve success Moi as President, sued Saitoti yet others over alleged role within the Goldenberg scandal. Three several weeks after his re-appointment as Vice-President on 2 April 1999, Otieno Kajwang’, a Raila ally, moved a personal member’s motion of no confidence within the Vice-President for his alleged role within the Goldenberg fraud. Saitoti survived the onslaught.
The Goldenberg spectre came back to haunt Saitoti within the wake from the fierce political infighting between your LDP/KANU faction and Kibaki supporters in NARC that adopted the 2005 referendum. On 3 Feb 2006 a study through the Goldenberg Commission of Inquiry, chaired by Justice Samuel Bosire, suggested that George Saitoti should face criminal charges for his participation within the Goldenberg scandal. On 13 Feb 2006, Saitoti under your own accord walked apart from his ministerial docket to pave method for investigations in to the allegations. However, on 31 This summer 2006, a 3-judge bench headed by Justice Frederick Nyamu issued a certiorari order clearing Prof Saitoti associated with a wrongdoing, expunging his name in the Bosire Commission Report and issuing a purchase on permanent stay of prosecution against Saitoti.
In dismissing the 23- sentences from the report, our prime Court bench citing three inter-related errors of commission and omission through the Bosire Commission:

• The inquiry in to the Goldenberg fraud had produced a pyramid of noticeable bias, discriminatory management of evidence, submissions and factual errors that undermined the quest for justice and fairness.
• The factual flaws, biased and unprofessional handling of evidence by Inquiry brought to wrong findings. The Inquiry’s declare that Prof Saitoti unlawfully approved the 15 percent ex-gratia payments to supplement payment in addition to the 20 percent export compensation permitted at that time underneath the law were factually wrong. Indeed, the customs refunds, which Saitoti was charged with approving, were really went by Parliament.
• Lengthy delay and wrong findings through the Goldenberg inquiry denied Prof Saitoti any conceivable chance fair trial and justice.

On 15 November 2006, President Kibaki reappointed Saitoti to Cabinet. In April 2012, the vetting board found Justice Samuel Bosire unfit for everyone within the judiciary citing fails because the Chairman from the Goldenberg Commission of Inquiry. He overlooked a higher Order From The Court to summon upon the market President Daniel arap Moi, Musalia Mudavadi and Nicholas Biwott as witnesses. The vetting board also accused Justice Nyamu of undermining public confidence within the courts for issuing a lasting stay of prosecution against Saitoti.
Beginning October 2011, Saitoti labored carefully with national Minister of Defence Mohamed Yusuf Haji to determine through Linda Nchi, a coordinated operation in southern Somalia between your Somali military and also the Kenyan military from the Al-Shabaab number of insurgents. The mission was formally brought through the Somali army, using the Kenyan forces supplying an assistance role. At the begining of June 2012, Haji signed another agreement re-hatting Kenya’s deployed military forces in Somalia underneath the AMISOM general command.
In November 2011, Saitoti confirmed he was at the race to achieve success President Kibaki, who’s set to retire following the next general election. Saitoti reiterated his candidature in The month of january 2012, ongoing to tour Kenya, with meet-the-people excursions towards the Rift Valley, Eastern and Central provinces.
It made an appearance to become history repeating itself within the fight for that soul from the Kikuyu between, Saitoti, a Maasai with Kikuyu kith and kin, and Uhuru Kenyatta, an intensive-bred Kikuyu. Uhuru is broadly looked as the presumptive successor to President Kibaki, but Saitoti was emerging also, like a likely candidate. When Uhuru’s run for that presidency is thwarted through the confirmed charges through the ICC, it remains a too-up whether Saitoti might have taken advantage of the spin-off.

Saitoti would be a businessman who’d interests in agriculture, horticulture, real estates, hospitality and pastoralism.
Saitoti’s family existence rarely managed to get in to the public space. His wife, Margaret Saitoti, was with him once the High Court dropped charges around the 16 years Goldenberg situation. His brother, Ronald Musengi, is a banking executive using the Kenya Commercial Bank. Lately Musengi applied to become a person in the nation’s Police Service Commission
Saitoti died on Sunday 10 June 2012 around 9:00 am whenever a Eurocopter AS350 helicopter of the Kenya Police Air Wing registration 5Y-CDT, transporting him and also the Assistant Minister for Internal Security, Joshua Orwa Ojode, crashed within the Kibiku section of Ngong forest, killing them and 4 others. He was hidden on 16 June in Kajiado North constituency. Following the Maasai elders decided to abandon the standard funeral rites and embrace the Catholic way, fifty bulls were slaughtered in the funeral in compliance with Maasai tradition. Saitoti ended up being to table a ministerial statement in Parliament of the very most anticipated Finger of God report which incorporated Quincy Timberlake, Esther Timberlake (ne Arunga) and Frederick Hellon.