Man who took secrets on Tom Mboya’s killing to his grave

By Kenneth Kwama

Kenya: In December 1969, precisely four months after the murder of Tom Mboya, prison officials in Nairobi announced that Nahashon Isaac Njenga Njoroge, the man convicted of the shooting, had been hanged secretly.

Information about the whole event was scanty, even inaccessible to the local media, but reports published by Time magazine on December 5, 1969, indicated that officials refused to disclose the date or details of the execution.

“But it was reported in Nairobi that Njoroge had died at 3am on November 8. According to these reports, he went to his death without explaining what he had meant when he asked police after his arrest: Why don’t you go after the big man?”

On August 18, 1969, Canadian newspaper, Ottawa Citizen reported that 32-year old Njoroge had been ordered to stand trial at the High Court on a charge of murdering then Economics Minister, Mboya.

“After listening to 65 witnesses, magistrate SK Sachdeva said he was satisfied there were sufficient grounds to warrant a trial,” reported the paper. The accused was represented by Samuel Waruhiu, a lawyer who confessed to the magistrate during the trial that he was a novice.

Waruhiu died in March 2011, but had all along stated that he didn’t know any more than was revealed in court about the murder. The young Waruhiu, who was not even a criminal lawyer, had been approached by Njoroge’s wife, Grace, to take up the case.

The assassin was not arrested at the scene and Njoroge denied pulling the trigger, telling the court that Mboya was his longtime friend.

The last witness in the case was named Sidney Cecil Grimley, a ballistics expert attached to the Ugandan police, who said the two bullets that had been found in Mboya’s body were fired from a revolver found in Njoroge’s home. An earlier witness had claimed that Njoroge’s finger prints were found on the gun.

A statement written by Njoroge while in police custody claimed that the gun had been planted on him by ‘revolutionaries’ of the Kenya Peoples’ Union, the opposition party, who Njoroge said talked of a Cuban style revolution in Kenya.”

KPU’s statement

Perhaps in anticipation that the party would be linked with Mboya’s death, KPU Secretary Achieng’ Oneko had issued a statement clarifying that the opposition outfit had nothing to do with Mboya’s demise.

Njoroge’s hanging in November 1969 came just days after founding President Jomo Kenyatta banned KPU, making Kenya a one-party state. It was, however, conducted in secret and word only got out weeks later, and even then it was not through an official announcement.

The defence lawyer’s father, Chief Kung’u Waruhiu, was Kenyatta’s friend. He was assassinated on October 7, 1952, an event that partly informed Governor Everlyn Baring’s declaration of a State of Emergency.

It was during Waruhiu’s funeral that Kenyatta attended one of his last public meetings before his arrest.

Njoroge remains the official lone gunman in this case, the only person ever held to judicial account for Mboya’s convenient elimination. Decades later, people are still searching for the truth with the real story masked in rumour and innuendo.