Former Defence Minister and Gariisa Senator is dead and will be laid to rest in Nairobi’s Langata cemetery this afternoon. According to family members, the Senator who is also the Chai of the Building Bridges Inistiative taskforce was flown from Turkey a fortnight ago and later admitted at Aga Khan University Hospital, Nairobi, where he died Monday morning.
Haji served in various areas including the vast Rift Valley between 1970 and 1998. He was nominated to Parliament in 2002 and later in 2007, he was elected to Parliament unopposed as Ijara MP.
Haji was the Minister of Defence from 2008 to 2013 during Mwai Kibaki’s administration and briefly served as the acting Minister of Internal Security and Provincial Affairs in 2012. It was during his tenure when the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) troops were deployed to Somalia to fight Al Shabaab.
Mr Haji joined Kenya’s provincial administration in 1960 as a district officer (DO) and rose through the ranks to become one of the country’s most powerful provincial commissioners.
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