| Intro | Politician | ||
| Is | Politician | ||
| From | Kenya | ||
| Type | Politics | ||
| Gender | female | ||
| Education |
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Peris Tobiko (born 1969) is a Kenyan politician. She was elected the first female Maasai member of parliament in 2013 in a historic win even after elders had “cursed” her for defying the patriarchal norms of her community. She was re-elected for a second term as MP for Kajiado East Constituency in August 2017.
Early life and education
Tobiko was one of four daughters born to her mother, her father’s first wife. She underwent female genital mutilation at age 10. Her illiterate father, whose second wife bore him another ten children, tried to make her a child bride three times between the ages of 13 and 18. She ran away and had older women in the community report him to the police. Her mother faced being cast out of her home by her in-laws for failing to produce a male heir, as Tobiko later said, “girls are not considered to be children.”
Tobiko studied political science at the University of Nairobi.
Career
Tobiko worked for the government’s pension fund, before running for parliament in 2007. She came third. When she won the party primaries in 2013, Maasai elders held a ceremony to curse her and those who voted for her. She was elected to represent Kajiado East, defeating her seven male rivals, making her the first female Maasai member of the National Assembly. She was re-elected in 2017, defeating another woman, Mary Seneta for the Jubilee Party nomination.
Her priority has been education, focusing on building and upgrading schools and paying bursaries to keep girls in secondary education. She has said that she believes the education of girls “is the one single factor that can change society.” She plans to run against incumbent Joseph Ole Lenku for governor of Kajiado County in 2022.
In January 2019, Tobiko was questioned by police and her colleague Henry Kimiti arrested after they were accused of inciting violence in an address to retrenched workers at the Kibini factory in Sultan Hamid. She said she would “not be intimidated by anyone in her fight for people’s rights.”
Tobiko is one of three women featured in the 2017 Thomson Reuters Foundation documentary When Women Rule, alongside Kyrgyzstan MP Aida Kasymalieva and Bolivian mayor Soledad Chapeton. She is also one of 200 renowned Kenyan women featured in the 2019 book, Pioneers & Transformers: The Journeys of Top Achieving Women in Kenya.
Personal life
Tobiko married a banker from Narok she met at University. They have two daughters, who were beaten up in their college car park after her 2013 victory by a group of young men who said, “Your mother should not come for our seat.” Tobiko is a Christian. Tobiko has a 250-acre farm in Ikolosat village, where she raises cattle as well as herbs grown for export under her company “Maasai Flavours”.