British journalist Andrew Morton has finally published the long-awaited biography of Kenya's President Daniel arap Moi. Titled Moi: The Making of An African Statesman, the book has been attacked by Moi's critics for pushing serious issues under the carpet. "It sounds like a panel-beating exercise on an old wreck," writes our Kenyan correspondent John Kamau who, like other Kenyans, is not too pleased that Moi emerges with a holier-than-thou image.

In May 1995, Andrew Morton - the famous author of Diana: Her True Story - flew to Nairobi to have a word with President Moi. "I had heard little but ill of him and he nothing of me," Morton admits in the book. "I wanted a fresh challenge after writing about the British royal family for 13 years."

So he flew into Nairobi. At first, Moi, who hardly speaks to journalists, was unwilling to tell him anything.

"He [however] agreed, albeit reluctantly, to give the project a fair wind," says Morton, rebuffing claims by "cynics" who suggested he had taken the Kenya shilling simply to banish Moi's "bad" image.

Morton insists that he "conducted interviews in rough huts [in Kenya] with chickens scratching around my feet, or lying in hot springs by Lake Bogoria, or by the glow of a campfire, the sounds of bullfrogs drowning out the voices on my tape recorder".

He continues: "I spoke to Western journalists who disliked Kenyans, had never been outside Nairobi and had no contacts in the government; [and to] human rights lobbyists who admitted they focussed on Kenya because it was relatively free and open; and [to] Western academics with little knowledge of KANU [the ruling party].

"These [people]," Morton laments, [are] the self-same intelligentsia whose opinions and reports form the basis for the world's perspective of Moi and Kenya. The graphic stories concerning [Moi] were simply grisly inventions, promoted by his political enemies and amplified by the Western media which, with few means of verifying the authenticity of the claims, simply rehashed these fabrications."

Welcome to the world of Andrew Morton and President Moi:

From the very beginning, Morton paints a picture of a president possessed by Christianity: "[Moi's] first name Daniel speaks of his own stern upbringing in mission schools," Morton writes. "As a growing boy, Moi, like the country he would one day rule, was imbued with the language, the values and the culture of an alien nation from a distant continent."

Once visiting London, Moi, according to Morton, remarked with sorrow during a trip to Westminster Abbey that he and his entourage were the only worshippers in this bastion of British Christianity.

"Before he retires each evening, Moi reads from the holy scriptures, particularly favouring the New Testament".

This image is sneaked into chapter one perhaps to goad readers to form a first impression of Moi as a "simple man". But Morton contradicts himself by saying "Moi buys his suits from [London's] Saville Row" which is definitely not a place for simple men.

Morton yet goes on to paint a picture of "a man dedicated to his Christian faith, and having few material needs or ambitions; a country lover of simple tastes and demands who enjoys nothing more than to sit under trees on his estate at Kabarak, drinking tea and chatting with farm-workers or anyone else who happens to be around".

Perhaps Morton did not know, or simply skipped, that The Simple Moi has a private Kshs2.5 billion presidential jet and an airstrip complete with tower at his farm in Kabarak. Morton does not mention this at all.

But he goes on to say: "As a one-time connoisseur of palaces, I was surprised when I first wandered around State House... the threadbare, down-at-heel decoration [and] lack of ostentation was perplexing, given published reports of the cult of personality surrounding Moi, and that, as one of Africa's remaining 'Big Men', he has allegedly salted much of the contents of his country's treasury into personal accounts."

So then, why does Moi have a bad image? Morton has a ready-made answer:

"The upright carriage, seemingly immobile features and stern countenance contribute to an image, certainly in the West, of President Moi as one of the last of the old-style African tyrants... His hesitant spoken English underscores in the minds of his critical Western audience that this is a man clinging to power by means other than intellectual ability".

Morton reveals little about President Moi's married life. In real life, Moi's image as a family man is unknown. But in the book, Morton tells that "in 1974 [Moi] divorced his wife Lena after nearly 25 years of marriage."

What brought about the divorce is still a mystery. Even Morton appears not to know, apart from implying that Lena "refused to dance" with the late President Jomo Kenyatta during a fund-raising event for the Rift Valley Technical College. "As an uncompromising Christian, [Lena] believed that dancing was sinful, but the insult to the [late] president gravely embarrassed Moi." Whether this led to the divorce, Morton doesn't say.

Long before the divorce, however, the couple had had eight children: Jennifer, Jonathan, Raymond, John, Mark, Doris, and the twins Phillip and Gideon. There is also an adopted daughter, June.

After the divorce, Morton says Lena "was accommodated in Moi's family" but fails to tell why she was never seen at the weddings of her own daughters and sons. In 1997 when her father died, Lena was kept in the background during the burial.

Something terrible certainly might have happened between Moi and Lena - and the children! But Morton glosses over it, only revealing that "inspite of his high hopes, Moi has had little joy from his family. With the exception of Gideon and June, the president feels disappointed and rather let down by his children. He is quite a lonely man".

But long before Morton's book, several stories had made the rounds in Kenya why Moi divorced Lena. One, still unconfirmed, said Lena had eloped with a top Kenyan banker and the embarrassment thereof forced Moi into the divorce which was finalised after he became president. Lena was subsequently banished to a farm in the Rift Valley and was not allowed in public. In fact, only a handful of Kenyan journalists today can point her out in public. Most Kenyans have not seen her at all in their lives.

Another unconfirmed story says during the wedding of one of her daughters, Lena had insisted she would attend. Moi is alleged to have sent a nominated MP to go and pick her up. She was taken to a distant locality instead.

At the wedding of another daughter, it is alleged the daughter fainted when she learned her mother was not attending. None of these tales appeared in the local press. However, people close to the president have contemptuously dismissed the tales as mere tittle-tattle put about by his critics and political opponents. "Not true," they often say.

In Kenya, President Moi is known for dishing out money at every stop. With an official taxable salary (his own admission last year) of Kshs40,000 (£400) a month, critics have always questioned the source of Moi's wealth. And Morton does not enrich our understanding either.

"Walk into any bar in Nairobi and the stories of Moi's vast wealth are trotted out, focussing mainly on his overseas bank accounts in Austria and Switzerland where, it is said, he has squirreled away billions of shillings," Morton writes.

Kenyans would laugh to death to hear that Joshua Kulei [Moi's right hand man] is the one to defend Moi here: "I can say categorically that the president has no bank account overseas. As you know, the president has simple needs and lives a simple life, he is not an extravagant man. His main income comes from his farm at Kabarak."

Kenyans know that their President grows fruit and rears cows at Kabarak, but whether this brings in enough money to dish around is another matter. To Morton, Moi is a poor man.

Morton had another mountain to climb here. Robert Ouko served as foreign minister under Moi. A brilliant man, he was reported to have outshone President Moi on a visit to America in late 1989. The two men returned home in different planes. Soon after, in February 1990, Ouko was murdered.

Morton argues that the murder was a "Luo affair" and points the accusing finger at former State House Permanent Secretary for Provincial Administration, Hezekiah Oyugi, who has since died himself.

Morton pours scorn at the much floated theory that Nicholas Biwott, one of Moi's most powerful henchmen, was the man who pulled the trigger or ordered the killing of Ouko.

Morton tells how Ouko had had good relations with both President Moi and Biwott. He says Oyugi is the one who "promoted" the suicide theory inside and outside State House. Scotland Yard detective, Supt John Troon, who was flown to Nairobi to help investigate the murder was "misled", according to Morton, into thinking that Ouko's murder had something to do with corruption and kick-backs at the heart of government.

"What Troon failed to discover was that Dr Ouko, a well-known womaniser, had been enjoying a friendship with Oyugi's third and favourite wife, Betty. The couple had had problems in [having] children, so much so that Oyugi had sent Betty to a Harley Street clinic [in London] for tests. His reaction when he discovered that his wife was close to Ouko can only be guessed at." Morton leaves readers actually guessing that Ouko died for taking liberties with Oyugi's wife. Ouko's family will have something to say here.

Moi's rise to the top was troubled, says Morton. He reveals that Charles Njonjo, the recently rehabilitated politician and chairman of the Kenya Wildlife Service, was the one who floated Moi's name to President Kenyatta.

"The appointment of Moi angered the Kikuyu elite. They had little time for [him]", Morton reveals. "Examples of the petty humiliations he suffered are numerous: Kikuyu cabinet ministers would deliberately speak in their own tongue when they wanted to exclude him; officials at the various State Houses would keep him waiting unnecessarily when he was due to see [Kenyatta]."

Kenyatta himself, according to Morton, also tested Moi's mettle. "Moi was summoned to State House in Nakuru to see [Kenyatta] but was deliberately kept waiting by the president's aide-de-camp, the (then) Rift Valley provincial commissioner, Isaiah Mathenge, who allowed numerous groups to call on the president while Moi sat patiently in the waiting room.

"When Kenyatta rang to see who was left, Mathenge replied: 'There is only Moi here'. Then Kenyatta came out and started speaking [in] Kikuyu which Moi follows with difficulty. In the end, he asked Moi to listen to a choir with him. During the singing, Kenyatta dosed off. All the while Moi kept his composure."

From then on, however, Moi became Kenyatta's "dependable eyes and ears", says Morton. But that was not all. More humiliations were to come. There was even an attempt to constitutionally block his rise to the presidency.

In 1975, Moi returned from an OAU meeting in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, only to be "accused of bringing guns as part of a conspiracy to oust Kenyatta. [The] Rift Valley police chief James Mungai conducted a vigorous search for the weapons, ordering his men to examine Moi's offices at the Nakuru Oil and Flour Mills," Morton writes. "[They] raided his home in Kabarak. The search was in vain. On two occasions Mungai slapped Moi in the face in front of President Kenyatta at State House Nakuru."

How Moi The Simple just took the slaps as part of the job is quite interesting. At the time his ministry of home affairs was in charge of the police! And Mungai was technically under him.

Morton says, "Moi was a very scared man. Each night he prayed, knowing that he could be assassinated any time. Even so he was troubled as he was holding on to his job by the skin of his teeth."

According to Morton, the Kikuyu mafia got Mungai train a special paramilitary unit, called the "Ngoroko anti-stock theft unit" to carry out the plot. The unit operated under Mungai. "When Moi first got wind of these machinations, he ordered an investigation [but] before he received the report, responsibility for the police was transferred to [Mbiyu] Koinange, then minister in the office of [President Kenyatta].

"The purpose was to assassinate Moi and other high ranking politicians and civil servants" in the event of Kenyatta's death, Morton reveals. They aimed to lure Moi and 14 other key ministers to State House Nakuru, on the pretext that President Kenyatta was gravely ill and wished to see them before he died.

As Moi and his colleagues gathered round Kenyatta, Ngoroko askaris, armed with silenced weapons, would gun them down. They would then announce that they had been forced into this action because the vice-president [Moi] and the other ministers had attempted to kill Kenyatta as he lay on his sick-bed.

Luckily Kenyatta died in Mombasa and not Nakuru. And the man behind the machinations, Mbiyu Koinange, was in Nairobi at the time, having flown to the capital only hours before Kenyatta died. "While he slept, power slipped irretrievably from [Kenyatta's] grasp", Morton says.

Through the help of Charles Njonjo, Moi was sworn in as President. James Mungai, the man who had slapped him twice in front of Kenyatta, fled into exile - only returning much later perhaps realising that Moi was not out for revenge.

Moi indeed forgave him. But by then the new president had his own weeding out process in earnest. Moi started cautiously, kicking out the Kenyatta men and bringing in his own loyal lieutenants. The infighting in the cabinet continued. Radicals including, Raila Odinga (now chairman of the opposition National Democratic Party), George Anyona (now chairman of Kenya Social Congress), Koigi wa Wamwere, Otieno Mak'Onyango and university don, Mukaru wa Nganga "formed a clandestine cabal" to oust Moi, says Morton.

Moi threw them into detention for forming a new political party, and outlawed multi-partyism altogether. Moi now says he "regrets that we made that decision, we should have allowed room for anybody to form his own party".

The real scare, however, came on 1 August 1982 when Moi was at his home in Kabarak. The president's bodyguard, Elijah Sumbeiywo, armed himself with two submachine guns and strapped ammunition belts over both shoulders. He found the president casually dressed in a blazer and grey slacks, talking on the telephone.

"Your Excellency," Sumbeiywo told Moi, "can we move away from this house as it can be bombed?"

Moi, who had been assured that the situation in Nairobi was under control needed some convincing. "Do you think I am a coward?," he asked his escort commander.

"But I think your life is in danger," Sumbeiywo replied as he took his president's hands, adding: "Lets go."

They headed off into the bush, putting several miles between them and Kabarak, Morton reveals in the book.

Though senior military advisers asked Moi to remain in Nakuru for his safety, he insisted on going back to Nairobi. "The convoy that barrelled out of Kabarak late on Sunday morning made an extraordinary sight - the crowds of hawkers, street vendors and the simply curious who stood at the roadside, watched the passing procession [without] knowing whether their president had been taken captive," says Andrew Morton. "Even when Moi gave the single-finger Kanu salute, they dismissed it off as a display of bravado by the deposed head of state.

Morton exonerates Moi from virtually all the crimes he has been accused of. Misappropriation of funds, illegal expenditure, tribal clashes, human rights abuse, torture of political opponents. Moi is not guilty. Instead Andrew Morton blames the West for soiling Moi's image.

His Minister for Education, Kalonzo Musyoka, lends a supporting voice: "[Moi] is deeply resentful the way he is pushed into a corner and made to seem as though he is being brought to heel. He often says, 'I cannot fight the West but I have the right to be heard. I have the right to be treated with courtesy and respect because I am the leader of my people'."

"There is now the conviction that Moi will be the last Kenyan president to enjoy virtually unlimited authority", says Morton. "As a result, Moi can retire to his farm, spend more time with his grandchildren, and as he says, spend time preaching." When? Readers are left to guess, again.

Morton concludes that Moi is a man "more sinned against than sinning. Perhaps his greatest, and his least understood, achievement has been his ability to hold to the political ring in a volatile and intrinsically unstable society. His failings have been those typical of his tribal age set; to trust too much and for too long, and to allow problems to brew to a crisis before they are resolved".