Departed former Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha always thought someone was after him, Journalist Mercy Adhiambo says.
Adhiambo says that this almost made it impossible for her to access Magoha for an interview, and got only few minutes of it when he finally said yes.
She recalls that every time she would call him to request for an interview or to get his comment for her CBC feature stories, his first question would be “Who has sent you?”, a paranoid man who always suspected someone was out to get him.
She adds that he also always had his bodyguards around.
She says that Magoha also tried not to speak about his personal life, and at one point joked about his death and told her that it is only after he is gone that he would want some of his information revealed.
“His passion, his fears, what excited him, his successes, and in one of the conversations, he joked about his death. He said anytime he read someone giving details about themselves, he cringed. That some things should be left to unravel in death. He alluded that the only time he would want personal things to be said about him would be when he was long gone,” she writes in The Standard.
Adhiambo says that their closeness with time developed to an extent that they began talking freely and having regular work-related conversations.
She recalls that he once called her when he was trending on social media for giving a teacher a dress down at an event.
She has also termed him a generous man who was always willing to help when he could.
“When I wrote about candidates who lacked fees to join Form One, he offered to pay for some of them on condition that he remained anonymous. He said he schooled in Starehe where most of the students were on sponsorship and hated how they were constantly reminded that someone had sacrificed for them. This, he said, made the students feel like they were on punishment,” she further writes.
by: Curtis-Otieno