The Night I Stopped Drinking: Maraga Relives Haunting Nakuru Barracks Incident That Changed His Life

Former Chief Justice David Maraga has peeled back the layers of his carefully guarded personal life, recounting in striking detail the night that forced him to confront his worsening relationship with alcohol.

In a sit-down with content creator Oga Obina, the man once known for his strict moral compass revealed a past clouded by youthful recklessness, dangerous decisions and a near brush with death inside a Nakuru army barracks.

Maraga, today a presidential aspirant and respected elder in the Seventh Day Adventist church, said his struggle with alcohol began long before he stood in courtrooms or presided over the Supreme Court.

It started in the corridors of Maranda High School, where he says he fell in with “the wrong crowd,” a group that introduced him to drinking and set him on a path that nearly derailed his life.

“I was baptised in the SDA church when I was still in primary and I was a very well-behaved boy,” he recalled. “But at Maranda things changed. I mixed with people I should not have and that is how I started drinking.”

What began as innocent teenage experimentation snowballed through Kisii High School, then into the University of Nairobi, and later followed him into his early legal career.

By the time he was posted to the land registry in Nakuru as a young lawyer fresh from Kenya School of Law, alcohol was no longer a pastime.

It had become a habit that shaped his weekends, his decisions and, at times, his safety.

He remembers one of those moments with almost cinematic clarity.

After a weekend dash to Nairobi to process documents, he ran out of fuel before reaching Nakuru.

Stranded and unsure what to do, he wandered into Nyamakima where touts helped him gather passengers who contributed just enough fare for him to buy fuel and get back home.

He laughs now, but the underlying truth is that alcohol had already begun dictating his choices.

Then there was the minor accident, a careless bump that he brushed off at the time but later recognised as yet another warning sign.

But nothing prepared him for the night inside Nakuru’s army barracks that would finally jolt him awake.

It was a night of heavy drinking, the type that begins with laughter and ends in a fog.

He says the drinking stretched deep into the night until around 2am, when the world around him went dark in his memory.

He remembers shots of alcohol, loud music, uniformed men letting loose on their off-duty night, and then nothing.

The next morning, he woke up at home with no recollection of how he left the barracks or who drove him out.

“I realised I could have died,” he said, his voice dropping. “I could not remember how I got home. Anything could have happened. That is the day I decided to stop completely.”

He walked into church on January 1, 1991, shaken, sober and determined. He says he never took another drink again.

“That day changed everything. I went to church and never looked back.”

Three decades later, the man who once staggered out of the Nakuru barracks in a daze now stands on the national stage preparing for the highest office in the land.

On June 18, he declared he will run for the presidency in the 2027 general election. His reason, he says, is driven by a sense of duty sharpened by years of public service.

“After talking with friends and thinking deeply about the future of this country, I concluded that it is time to take responsibility for our leadership,” he said. “We cannot allow others to lead us into ruin. That reflection led me to decide to run for president.”

It is a remarkable evolution, a story that begins with a lost boy in a high school dormitory and winds through bars, courtrooms, and finally, the Supreme Court itself.

Yet the turning point remains that night in Nakuru, the night he woke up and chose life over the bottle.

In his own telling, it was the moment David Maraga met the man he was meant to become.