Joseph Awiti Mboga, a close aide to the late Cabinet minister Tom Joseph Mboya, has confessed for the first time that he knew about his friend's assassination plan, which happened more than 50 years ago.
The 90-year-old spoke exclusively to MediaMax at his Kisumu home and regretted not sharing the crucial piece of information that could possibly have prevented Mboya’s death.
“I have never shared this story with anyone, but today I will tell you because I cannot continue to live with it.
“It haunts me to date why I did not share with him the message from the missionary. How I wish I had shared it with him . . . perhaps he might not have been killed,” he began.
According to Mboga, he came across the information sometime in 1964 on his way from Kendu Bay to Kisumu via a ship.
He stated that he met a white missionary, a senior official of the Seventh Day Adventist, whose name he cannot recall, and they sat on adjacent seats. The missionary was on a world tour of various SDA churches in East Africa.
It is at that point that the missionary noticed the newspaper he was reading, the Sunday Journal, which had a picture of Tom Mboya on its front page.
“He told me that he knew Tom and described him as a ‘messiah’ for Africa and Kenya. But what shocked me is when he said that despite that fact, he (Tom) was going to be killed.
“He told me they were together in the US and in Ghana and he saw a brilliant, selfless and unique leader. He told of how, during an international press conference in the US, Mboya stood out as the best among other leaders in answering questions fielded by journalists,” Mboga narrated.
However, when he tried to get more information about what the missionary meant, he declined to divulge more details. After two hours, the ship docked at the Kisumu pier and the two parted ways.
Mboga disclosed that it was at that point that he travelled to Nairobi eager to meet Mboya and give him the information from the missionary but could not reach him.
He stated that when they finally met, the place was not conducive for discussion and therefore wasn't able to share the information.
Five years down the line, on July 5, 1969, the missionary man’s prediction came to pass and Mboga revealed that he cried after learning of Mboya’s death.
Mboga noted that he first met Mboya in 1951 at the Nairobi City Hall where they both worked as public health officers and quickly became friends.
