By Abdullahi Jamaa
It’s a scorching Friday afternoon in Mombasa, the coastal heat is exacerbating by the hour. Mvita Member of Parliament Abdulswamad Shariff Nassir is visibly jaded, he sits on a couch in his constituency office where he patiently serves members of the public one by one.
It’s past 5 pm and there are few more people waiting in the lobby area to meet the MP. He has to stay longer to see everyone on his appointment list. It has been a long strenuous day for him and his occasional smile hides his already pooped face.
“Patience is a virtue that we must all have,” he told The Plu “It is a lesson that I have learned in my life and that people should learn”
Born in Mombasa’s Majengo neighborhood in July 1974, the MP is a man of people, well known in the sprawling constituency where he has grown to be a servant leader.
Adoring father
As a devoted family man, an adoring father of three sons and a daughter, the bubbly MP considers himself as fiercely faithful to family values, a gusto that gave him an endless parade of wonderful opportunities in life.
“Family means a lot to me: it means protection, it means loyalty and family is a shoulder to lean on. I have a wonderful family” he notes
He discerns between punishing and disciplining his children. As a man who believes in gentle, rational and measured reasoning he metes out discipline in his own way because he knows family relations are built not only through instructions but through affirmations.
“I have never raised a hand against my kids. But that doesn’t mean I don’t discipline them”
He appreciates the role his parents have played in his upbringing and adores his mother; a strong woman that he says helped him nurture his style of contemporary 21st-century political leadership.
His resolve to lead the fight for his people starts with his health and so he loves hitting the gym four times a week. His conviction about the place of religion in life is strong- the Islamic tenets of oneness and the will of God enliven his spirit.
Father’s footsteps
He is currently at the acme of both regional and national politics serving as the chairman of the powerful parliamentary committee on public investments.
Politics he says was a calling that emanated from his beliefs to advance community issues; it is a career that has made his involvement with his electorates much more of a dream that came true.
“Politics was a calling for me. I believe in involvement with society and it gave me that platform to engage with the people”
Abdulswamad is following his late father’s footsteps, the legendary Shariff Nassir, a no-nonsense refulgent politician and a regional kingpin who during the days of KANU called the shots.
“My late father was a political figure that I admired. He was able to achieve a lot with little resources. You can remember those days there were no CDFs, there were no devolved units”
Although his father was a dominant psychological force in his political life, Abdulswamad’s egalitarian politics and his leadership doctrines are a world apart from that of the 1990s.
In the past decade, his constituency suffered from relentless insecurity where police occasionally harassed residents in their fight against the bigoted war on terrorism.
Admittedly, it’s one of those areas that gave the second term MP so many sleepless nights as he had to mediate between unctuous security personnel and pensive residents whose rights were consistently violated.
“There were police harassments amid the war on violent extremism. Police operations created more insecurity problems, but with our consistent efforts to address the issue, it has greatly reduced and Mvita is now peaceful”
Significant strides
From 2013 when he was first elected as MP, his Mvita constituency made significant strides in several facets of life. Education is, however, one of his key areas of interest putting his best foot forward to address poor performance and mundane school infrastructures.
Under his watch, the constituency introduced innovative and timely intervention of digital retina scanners to curb incidences of lateness in classes as part of an invigorated measure to boost student attendance.
“We have started this technology in ten schools as part of a piloting phase with the hope of spreading it to all the schools within the constituency”
Mvita’s urban population meant it had to harbor the most negative impact and ravages of modernization including relentless drug abuse- that has been a hard nut to crack.
In Mombasa, Abdulswamad is a leading figure in the fight against drug abuse, one more battle that he has fought with great nationalistic fervor. It’s a war that is still on course where he waged a bold campaign, particularly in schools.
“The war against drug abuse is an area we have tackled greatly to reduce drug demands, especially in schools. We introduced capacity building programs to address the menace”
As aplomb as he is, he must overcome the tenacity of regional politics to kick oligarchic leadership out of his people’s way, but born into such a distinguished political family, it’s hardly surprising that Abdulswamad would eventually gravitate towards becoming one of Kenya’s top-notch Muslim politicians.
