“Offer your flowers not when the grave opens, but while the heart still beats, because praise given in life plants joy, while praise given in death simply echoes regret.”

By Professor Peter Ndiang’ui, Fort Myers, Florida

In March this year, I published an appeal urging Kenya to honor one of its greatest sons, Professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. The article, “Kenya Should Honor Professor Ngũgĩ Now, Not Later,” appeared in The Standard and was also published by Diaspora Times. It was a call to recognize, in his lifetime, a man whose words and work have shaped our national conscience.

When I shared the article with Ngũgĩ himself, he was deeply moved by the gesture but firm in his principles. He told me, in Gikuyu:

“ingĩheo nĩ muingĩ wa Kenya no njitĩkĩre na ngatho. No ingĩheo nĩ Ruto, ndingĩmĩoya.”
(“If I am honored by the people of Kenya, I would accept it with gratitude. But if I am honored by Ruto, I would not accept it.”)

Ngũgĩ repeated this statement more than once — first in a three-way conversation with Hon. Geoffrey Wandeto, MP for Tetu, who had submitted my appeal to Parliament, and later with D.K. Gitaũ, the Editor of Diaspora Times. His position was unambiguous and unwavering.

When Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o passed away in May this year, he had never retracted those words. It is therefore profoundly disheartening and ethically tone-deaf that President William Ruto would proceed to announce a posthumous state award for Ngũgĩ during the Mashujaa Day celebrations. Such an act not only disregards Ngũgĩ’s explicitly stated wishes but also diminishes the moral integrity of the honor itself. To claim to celebrate Ngũgĩ while violating his own expressed will is a contradiction — one that mocks the very values of truth, justice, and freedom that his life embodied.

Ngũgĩ taught us that “a writer has no choice but to choose sides. He chooses to write for the people, not the rulers.” His rejection of political co-optation was a lifelong stance against tyranny and hypocrisy. He never sought validation from power; he sought liberation for the powerless. By bestowing this award in defiance of Ngũgĩ’s principles, the Ruto administration has turned what could have been an act of national gratitude into a symbol of political opportunism. It desecrates the memory of a man who consistently resisted the misuse of state power to whitewash injustice.

Out of respect for Ngũgĩ’s moral courage and in fidelity to his own words, I urge President Ruto and his government to withdraw the award immediately. That would be the truest way to honor him — not by decorating his name posthumously for political mileage, but by listening to the voice he left behind. If Kenya as a people wishes to celebrate Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, let it be through the collective will of its citizens — through libraries, scholarships, literary festivals, and education reforms that embody his spirit, not through hollow gestures from those he explicitly declined to be associated with.

As Ngũgĩ himself once reminded us, “Writers must be the memory of their people.” To honor his memory, we must also honor his truth.
Withdraw Ruto’s award now — in Ngũgĩ’s honor.