Engineer @Mark Rege is too young to have been taught by @Bupamba.

As we remember this day, may those who perished RIP

I have always doubted the narrative of So and So has "Serious connections in [INSERT RANDOM WHITE MAN PLACE HERE]" especially in the way they are framed. We all used to have these types of discussions when we were younger and they went something like.

In our naive minds we would have civil way resulting from our disagreement about that paperbags ball (tulikuwa tunaita "Makanye").
So to me, i don't think these "connections" we think politicians have really result to anything unless it's a "scratch my back and I will scratch yours" type commensurate arrangement where the said [WHITE MAN PLACE] does something for you and you sell some part of the country/contract/deal to them. So the only way a country would risk a single soldiers life would be if there was something to gain not for "friendship" or "camaraderie" or "general good feelings resulting from holding hands and singing Kumbaya".

In 1982 i was very little.
I have read many times about this historical event with interest.
At first when i started reading about this coup story,i couldnt believe that Moi was nearly toppled.
When i was a kid,everything was about 'mtukufu rais Daniel arap moi'.Right from radio bulletins to school.
I remember we used to count the number of times one has seen Moi.
Whenever Moi was around,that was a holyday for children as there was to be no school that day.
So for me to imagine that he was nearly ousted was difficult.But i have learnt that,it was this incident that changed him.
James Waore Dianga claims he is the one who started the coup idea.He has written a book concerning it titled 'Atempted coup' or something like that.I have not read the book.So i would like any wazua member who has it to upload it for us.
Dianga then recruited Hezekiah Ochuka.But before long,Dianga was arrested and jailed.
Ochuka took over the plot upon the imprisonment of Dianga.He enrolled many airforce guys into the plot.key among them:
1.Protus Oteyo
2.Joseph Ogidi
3.Fenwicks chesoli
and many others.
The coup failed because:
1.Ochuka lied to the soldiers about level of support he had acquired.The only support he had was from Raila and his father Jaramogi.Yet he told his recruits about Support from Russia.
2.During the day of the coup,the mutineers were drunk.
3.The recruited airforce guys were meant to believe that the whole army was in support of the coup.
4.The coup was a counter offensive to beat Njonjo planned coup which was in the pipeline.
Its said Ochuka ruled kenya for six hours.

@Ebenyo

The coup did not change Moi. It gave him a pretext that he could use to become repressive.

Even before the coup, Moi was busy creating pretexts that he could use to clamp down on opposition. He would go around making speeches telling Kenyans that there were subversives out to destroy the country and that he would deal thoroughly with them. He had become completely paranoid.

The coup gave him the justification to clamp down on opposition and remove the Kenyatta era officials. Moi was especially afraid of Kikuyu and Luo officers and he used the coup to remove them from the ranks of the military.

So the likes of Ben Gethi who was police commissioner and PM Kariuki who was Air Force commander were removed and jailed at Kamiti maximum.

Detention without trial was re-introduced by Parliament.

University of Nairobi which was a hotbed of dissident lecturers was closed for a year and a half.

Its the same thing that Erdogan is doing in Turkey now.

All 300 people who died on that day plus the others who died in detention or were hunted down by Moi's goons all died needlessly. Moi could have prevented the coup if he wanted. Had he done so, even the coup plotters would be alive today.