Prof George Wajackoyah: The spy who knew too much…was to be killed in military hospital!

Wajackoyah and fellow Special Branch officers used phone tapping to nail culprits in the murder of Dr Robert Ouko

**Child of Destiny:** Prof George Wajackoyah is among the few key people involved in the murder investigation of Dr Robert Ouko still alive. Among key witnesses who died mysteriously included; Paul Shikuku, the herds boy who discovered Ouko’s body, Ouko’s mother, Susan Seda, Otieno Yogo, Ouko’s driver and bodyguard, James Onyango, a relative who spoke to him on phone and Oidho Ogalo, a farmhand in Ouko’s farm on the night he disappeared.

By GW Ngari

Editor-at-Large

By now you know that Prof George Wajackoyah, a Presidential aspirant in this year’s General Election, was to be killed in 1990-the year Foreign Affairs Minister Dr Robert Ouko, was assassinated in February.

Dr Ouko was murdered two weeks after jetting home from the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, USA. The late President Daniel arap Moi forced his way to the Prayer Breakfast with a delegation of 80 plus nabobs in government, against advice from Dr Ouko and the late Dennis Afande, Kenya’s Ambassador to America,

Wajackoyah was then a Special Branch officer at Nyati House along Loita Street, Nairobi, but stationed at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) when Ouko went missing, before his charred remains were found by a herds boy-who later disappeared into thin air.

A string of mysterious killings to eliminate witnesses of Ouko’s murder made Wajackoyah a candidate for murder

**In Cold Blood:** Wajackoyah’s version of how Foreign Affairs Minister, Dr Robert Ouko, was murdered triggered a chain of events that saw Kenya’s Spy Chief, the late James Kanyotu replaced and Wajackoyah living as an asylum seeker abroad for over 20 years until he anonymously resurfaced in slums around Nairobi’s Garden Estate in 2012.

The herds boy, Paul Shikuku, must have died in a string of mysterious killings to eliminate any witnesses in the ensuing investigations into Ouko’s murder-and which is where Wajackoyah came in-as a candidate for murder.

Wajackoyah was in a team of intelligence officers tasked by the late Spy Chief, James Kanyotu, to investigate elements in government that schemed Ouko’s murder. The findings were for internal use at Nyati House, but alas! Wajackoyah became too vocal, according to the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC).

See, Wajackoyah and fellow Special Branch officers had used phone tapping technology to map events leading to Ouko’s murder and nail the culprits. Shortly, Wajackoyah was a spy who knew too much.
The spies unearthed how Ouko was murdered, but refusing to doctor incriminating phone evidence, made Wajackoyah a marked man.

Wajackoyah would have been dead meat were it not for Smith Hempstone, the Jack Daniel and nyama choma loving American Ambassador to Kenya

**The Rogue Ambassador:** Dr Robert Ouko was shot dead by Cabinet Minister Nicholas Biwott at State House Nairobi, according to American Ambassador to Kenya, Smith Hempstone (above). Ouko’s body was then airlifted in a CID chopper to Got Alila Hills near his Koru home and there, it was partially burnt “to conceal the nature of his injuries” wrote Hempstone in his memoirs. But Hempstone’s allegations remain hard to prove.

And he would have been dead meat were it not for Smith Hempstone, the Jack Daniel and nyama choma loving American Ambassador to Kenya, who helped Wajackoya flee Kenya to the UK.

Hempstone later recounted, in his memoirs, Rogue Ambassador: An African Adventure, how, Ouko was fished from his Koru home near Kisumu and ferried to State House Nairobi. In between a harambee of bodily harm and torture, Ouko was interrogated on his explosive dossier on official corruption in which feared Cabinet Minister, Nicholas Biwott, starred prominently.

Hempstone claimed Biwott shot Ouko twice in the head at State House in the presence of Moi and Internal Security PS, Hezekiah Oyugi- who controlled a ‘chain of government spies, informants and thugs.’

Intelligence officer Martin Ochanda died at the Forces Memorial Hospital-where sinister fate awaited Wajackoyah

**The Hatchet Man:** Hezekiah Oyugi was the PS for Internal Security when Dr Robert Ouko was murdered. Oyugi, who had his own ‘parallel intelligence to the government, died of a rare brain disease in London in 1992. President Moi neither sent condolence messages nor attended his burial.
Other key people who died included; Judge Fidahussein Abdullah. He died at Aga Khan Hospital in 1993, two days to delivering his judgment on Jonah Anguka, one of the murder suspects, resulting in a mis-trial and later acquittal. Anguka fled Kenya to the USA in 1994.
Of interest was also the death of Philip Kilonzo, the Commissioner of Police when Dr Ouko was murdered. Kilonzo was poisoned in his Ndallas bar in Yatta in 1997. Despite drinking with potential witnesses to his murder, the case went cold.

As murder investigations started, key witnesses began disappearing when not dying mysteriously-forcing Wajackoyah to flee in the messy cover up that included claims Ouko had committed suicide, which Kenyans did not buy.

The government hired New Scotland Yard detective, John Troon who tagged along pathologist Dr Lain West. Both fingered Biwott and Oyugi as the masterminds of Ouko’s murder in which over 20 key witnesses died, 11 of them in one year. They included Wajackoyah’s fellow spies; Superintendent Joseph Mbogo, the lead investigator, Nehemiah Shikuku, senior assistant commissioner of police and intelligence officer Martin Ochanda who died at the Forces Memorial Hospital-where sinister fate awaited Wajackoyah.

“I was detained and tortured properly,” recalled Wajackoyah. “I would be blindfolded to the City Mortuary at night. That was maximum psychological and emotional torture.”

What Wajackoyah knew about Ouko’s murder interested the Americans

**The Laughing Stock:** Government pathologist, Dr Jason Kaviti, advanced the theory that Dr Robert Ouko had shot himself in the head, before dousing his 59-year-old body with petrol and setting himself ablaze. Kaviti later confessed that he made the claims under duress. He died of a heart attack in 2011.

Wajackoyah was being taken to Forces Memorial Hospital for ‘final dilution’ when events drastically changed. A child of fate, he escaped from the jaws of death through the goodwill of people, a hallmark of his life. One was a senior government official who informed Hempstone of what awaited Wajackoyah at Forces Memorial Hospital.

What Wajackoyah knew about Ouko’s murder interested the Americans and using his connections, Hempstone had Wajackoyah spirited from Nairobi to London where he sought asylum in 1990.

He returned home in 2012 because “the umbilical cord and the blood that my mother shed giving birth haunted me.”