Ababu Namwamba, the Cabinet Secretary for Youth Affairs, Sports and the Arts, on Tuesday offered National Youth Service (NYS) officer Dickson Loyerer a job in his office.

This is a day after a video of the NYS officer bent down cleaning his shoes at an official function emerged and went viral and attracted criticism from Kenyans on social media.

In the video, Loyerer was captured wiping Namwamba’s muddy black leather shoes after officiating a tree-planting initiative at the NYS Headquarters in Nairobi.


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But Kenyans criticized the CS for what they termed as demeaning the young man as his NYS bosses urged him on and even telling Namwamba not to offer him any tip for the work.

He can be heard in the video asking NYS Director General Matilda Sakwa to be permitted to tip the officer for his kind gesture but the service boss stops him as he smiles sheepishly.


Namwamba said: “I hope, Madam Director General allows a tip,”

“No! No! We do not allow a tip. It is part of their discipline,” Sakwa responds amid laughter.

Coming to Tuesday, and Namwamba announced that he had met Loyerer at his NYS Headquarters office and made a request to NYS to allow the said officer join his team.


“Dickson Loyerer yesterday graciously volunteered to clean my muddy shoes after a tree planting session at @NYS_Ke HQ where he works. Today we shared a cup of tea in my office, where he gave me NYS tips on grooming, discipline and skills. I have requested Loyerer to join my staff,” he tweeted on Tuesday.

This has been widely seen as an attempt by the CS to save face following the backlash from the Kenyan public that followed the sharing of the video in which Loyerer is cleaning his shoes in what many have termed as distasteful.