Fredrick Ngatia has never had to attend a job interview in the past 40 years. Selected as one of the top six students from the Kenya School of Law to join the Attorney General’s office, Ngatia sat across Frank Shields who later become a notorious duty judge as he lit a cigarette and asked the rookie lawyer to choose between criminal prosecution and civil litigation.
Ngatia chose civil litigation and takes great pride that he subsequently added a 9,000 square-kilometre hump to the map of Kenya at the border with Sudan. He had begun to inquire into the Ilemi Triangle, and his thesis for a Master of Laws degree at the London School of Economics shaped Kenya’s case when it acquired the territory of over 9,696 square kilometres.