Famous stage-managed traffic accidents in Kenya

Barack Obama Sr

On the night of November 24, 1982, while still working on a plan to revitalise Nairobi’s transport system, Obama Sr left for Kaloleni to drink with friends. He then left for home. On the way, he crashed into the stump of a giant gum tree and died on the spot.

“We found him sitting by the steering wheel. (The car) did not roll. So after it was said that he had hit the tree, we just had to believe it, because he could not talk back. We really didn’t believe it was a real accident. Because his body was never broken, his vehicle was not badly crushed. He was just dead after the accident. Not even much blood was seen,” Sarah Obama is quoted in The Bridge, a book by Firstbrook, detailing Obama’s life before he became president.

Long before his death Obama Sr had grown critical of the Kenyatta government, and for that he was sidelined. In a paper he penned in 1965 for the East African Journal, Obama wrote a harsh critique of the Mboya-Kibaki engineered Sessional Paper No. 10, which laid the basis of the country’s economic policy.

While the Sessional Paper rejected the classic Marxist philosophy then embraced by the Soviet Union and some European countries, it argued that centralised planning should define common farming lands to maximise productivity and should defer to tribal traditions instead of hastening individual land ownership.

It was this brash personality and loud-mouth nature that saw him sink into alcoholism and deeper into disillusionment and despair. The whisky-fuelled rages, brutality and drunk-driving became his signature.

Kitili Mwendwa, Kenya’s first black Chief Justice – Lania

According to the Weekly Review magazine of the time, Kitili had left his office on Muindi Mbingu Street at 2.30 p.m. in an Alfa Romeo car and headed for his home in Gigiri.

He then changed the Alfa Romeo for a red Lancia registration KSK 736 for the trip to his Chania Farm in Thika. His mission to Thika was to pay his workers and meet his farm manager and business partner Palle Rune. But the journey ended when his car reportedly swerved off the road, rolled and landed on its roof in a ditch.

He was pronounced dead on arrival at the Thika hospital.

Mr Rune, his business partner of 15 years, said a lorry driver whom Kitili had overtaken said he found his car parked by the roadside near KU and he was checking tyre pressure by kicking them.

“Minutes later, Kitili overtook the same lorry but rolled 100 metres ahead,” Mr Rune, who is now based in Mombasa, told the Sunday Nation. “The fact that he went round his car kicking the tyres is an indication that there could have been something wrong with his steering wheel,” he said.

He also does not understand why he ended up in Thika instead of Nairobi.

While an inquest confirmed that Kitili Maluki Mwendwa died in an accident, his widow and children are yet to erase the doubts. They still ask why those who came to his rescue took him to Thika – 25 kilometres from the scene of the accident – instead of Aga Khan Hospital in Nairobi, only 15 kilometres away.

They still wonder how his car rolled at a stretch that was said to be fairly straight given his experience in driving.

And what was the cause of the mysterious fire at the Thika hospital laboratory on the same day that Kitili’s body was taken to the facility? Was it supposed to erase any evidence regarding the cause of death?

The family is yet to understand what happened between the scene of the accident and Thika hospital where Kitili was pronounced dead on arrival.

According to the Weekly Review magazine of October 4, 1985, a soldier who claimed to be a doctor checked Kitili’s pulse and said he was still alive.

A briefcase said to have been stuffed with an unspecified amount of money to pay workers at his 1,000-acre Chania Farm in Thika was never recovered.

John Njoroge Guchu, the good Samaritan who picked up Kitili soon after the accident, told the Sunday Nation on Saturday he never noticed it as he was more concerned about saving the man’s life. He added that there were many people at the scene.

In an interview with the Sunday Nation, Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka suggested that the former chief justice’s death was an assassination.

“When I got to the scene, I was left with no doubt that it was not an ordinary accident because the smashed glass (shards) apparently from collision impact were several metres away from his car, yet the road was a dual carriage way,” he said.

Mr Musyoka said it was suspicious to family and friends that the good Samaritan who rescued Kitili from the car wreckage decided to take him to Thika Hospital, a government facility about 25 kilometres away, while better equipped hospitals were much nearer and may only have taken minutes.

The former Chief Justice was reported to have been in a jovial mood at 2.30 p.m. in his Nairobi office but, two hours later, his body lay on a cold slab at the Thika hospital mortuary.

The family’s suspicion is based on the fact that there was no other car involved besides the one he was driving.

But Mr Guchu, who was the first on the scene of the accident, said he was driving behind him.

“We had just gone past a road bend and a drift after KU when the red car ahead of me began to swerve dangerously, first to the right then left and to the right again, before it crashed in a cloud of dust about 300 metres away,” said the 49-year-old businessman.

On Saturday, he said he found the driver lying unconscious a few metres from the car. This conflicts with his testimony at the inquiry on the cause of the former CJ’s death, where he said he lay unconscious in the car.

Some witnesses at the inquiry said Kitili was flung out and lay some 20 metres away from the car.

Kitili had just served for a year as the Kitui West MP after a 10-year hiatus from public life when he met his death on that Friday, September 27, 1985.

The crash came after Kitili had ended a silent house arrest imposed by President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta after he was implicated in the 1971 coup attempt.

Ronald Ngala, the Power and Communication minister

Ngala had been expected to attend Jamhuri Day celebrations on December 12 but changed his mind and decided to travel by road to Mombasa.

Although no one really knew the reason behind the Coast political kingpin’s sudden change of plan, there were allegations that he was annoyed by his 22-year-old second wife for failing to fly to Nairobi as agreed.

Thirty-five miles from Nairobi, his driver lost control and the car overturned three times.

The driver told the inquest that he had swerved to avoid hitting an animal but his account was doubted by other witnesses who claimed that he had initially told them that he lost control after bees flew into the car.

Nevertheless, a Good Samaritan recognised Ngala and drove him to Machakos Hospital.

An Israeli doctor, upon examining the politician, referred him to Kenyatta Hospital for treatment of his head injuries.

In Nairobi, Ngala, who was known to suffer from diabetes, slipped into a coma but gained consciousness the same day.

It was later discovered he was bleeding from the brain, which later led to multiple organ failure and eventually caused his death.

Anglican bishop Alexander Kipsang Muge

Bishop Muge was one of the many marked men. One of the Kanu hawks who had issued threats against the bishop was then Cabinet minister Peter Okondo. He had warned the bishop that should he step into Busia, he would not leave alive.

But Bishop Muge was not a man to take such threats. He was committed to the justice he lived and died for and he believed in speaking the truth.

On August 14, 1990 he decided to go to Busia for a crusade. On his way back to his Eldoret base, the outspoken cleric died in a mysterious road accident.

Observers and commentators did not miss the point of the threats that had been issued before his death. But that was as far as they could go.

Bishop Muge’s death was attributed to an ordinary accident. The driver of the “killer vehicle” was jailed for dangerous driving but died after serving five of his seven-year sentence.

But now Mr Khwatenge, who worked in Eldoret at the time, says the theory of an ordinary accident was only a cover-up, or even “an accidental” cover by the government for a murder well-planned and executed by agents of the Intelligence service. And that’s the testimony he so badly wants to tell the Kiplagat commission.

“This was an induced accident,” the former policeman told the Sunday Nation.

According to him, days before the bishop died, four Special Branch officers from Nairobi arrived in Eldoret with specific orders to “finish the bishop” who was becoming a thorn in the flesh for the Moi regime.

“When Mr Okondo talked, he wanted to be seen to be so loyal to the President. As far as we in the Intelligence knew, he was not part of any scheme (to harm the bishop). Muge knew his life was in danger but when he heard Okondo saying that, it confirmed his fears so he dared them and went there.”

They started by trailing him to Busia. Surprisingly, Mr Khwatenge said the agents did not make attempts to hide it from their victim that they were following him.

They hurled insults at the bishop and made middle finger gestures every time they overtook his car just to annoy him.

“It is called hostile surveillance, where you make somebody aware that he is being trailed then he becomes emotional and irrational,” Mr Khwatenge said.

When Bishop Muge was returning to Eldoret, they kept up with their harassment.

“All along, Bishop Muge knew he was being followed and he was looking for a way to shake them off.”

So, when he was approaching Kipkaren town towards Eldoret, he noticed a lorry ahead of him that was emitting thick smoke.

The ex-intelligence officer believes Bishop Muge wanted to overtake the lorry in the cover of the thick smoke, and then make good an escape.

For the bishop’s plan to work, he had to wait for an oncoming vehicle, preferably a trailer and then make the manoeuvre – to overtake the smoke-emitting lorry at high speed and get back to his lane just before the oncoming one approaches to delay his tormentors from overtaking.

“After Bishop Muge crashed his vehicle, the man who was in charge of the operation from Nairobi came out of their vehicle and ordered the rest to stay behind. He went straight to Muge’s damaged vehicle and only God knows what he did there,” said Mr Khwatenge. “When he came back, he took a powerful communication gadget to call Nairobi and said, ‘Operation Shika Msumari successfully completed’. It meant the bishop had been pushed to his own death.”

West Mugirango MP George Justus Morara – Peugeot 404

As he sipped his drink one late evening in Lusaka, Zambia, early September 1970, West Mugirango MP George Justus Morara bumped into Nahashon Isaac Njenga Njoroge – the man who assassinated Constitutional Affairs Minister, Tom Mboya, on July 5, 1969.

An astonished Morara, who was among members of the Social Welfare and Employment parliamentary committee on official duty, confronted Njenga who, in panic, bolted out of the club. The government had announced the previous year that Njenga had been sentenced to death and hanged for shooting dead the powerful Cabinet minister along Nairobi’s Government Road (present-day Moi Avenue).

Upon arrival at Nairobi’s Embakasi Airport, Morara and a few members of the House team, chaired by Kandara MP George Mwicigi, headed to Parliament buildings for a scheduled press conference.

Without mincing words, Morara spilled the beans on the group’s encounter with Njenga in Lusaka, and gave the Government a 48-hour ultimatum to produce the Bulgarian-trained Njenga.

Forty-eight hours later, the MP was dead — killed in a suspicious road accident along the Kakamega-Kisumu highway. He was only 34 years old and was seen as one of the most promising politicians — even mentioned as a possible future president.

On the day he met his death, Morara is said to have been in the company of parliamentary colleagues Mark Bosire (Kitutu Masaba) and Nyarangi Moturi (North Mugirango). The trio reportedly left Nairobi for upcountry in Morara’s car, with his colleagues alighting (after a brief argument) in Nakuru.

Morara proceeded alone to Kakamega for official duty, including a meeting with his friend, Kakamega District Commissioner Ezekiel Nyarangi.

According to family sources, the DC tried to dissuade him from proceeding to Kisii that night where his wife and family were, but he insisted. He never made it. That evening he died near Chavakali market. Police reports indicate the MP, who was driving a Peugeot 404, registration number KKZ 058, was involved in a head-on collision with a Police Land Rover, GK 1357, driven by Constable Fredrick Kugo.

The MP’s abrupt death was particularly devastating to his young family. His wife, Mary, was only about 24 years old, while the children Sandy, Duke and Innocent were only 2 years, 1 year and 5 months respectively.