The late late former Education Cabinet Secretary Professor George Magoha had a premonition before his death, his best friend Professor Walter Mwanda says.
According to Mwanda, who is also the deceased’s former colleague at the School of Medicine at the University of Nairobi, Magoha jokingly told him that his time was up and he will be the one to bury him.
He describes Magoha as not only a friend, but a close brother and was among three immediate family members who witnessed the former Education CS’s last moments.
“I had a machine, I put it in his hand the wrong way and he turned and put it the right way. It was recording, I checked the batteries and put it back. Within one second he went to sleep. The son and the wife were trying to make him sit and I said ‘no, let him lie flat’ and we rushed him to Nairobi Hospital,” Mwanda said.
The two professors met at the University of Nairobi eighteen years ago and became friends.
“There was a lady who had money to spend in honour of her late mother. She wanted to have a cancer institute built on behalf of the mother, at that time Professor Magoha was the dean of the school of Medicine. I took her to him,” he recalls how he met the deceased.
Magoha jokingly told him that his time was up and he will be the one to bury him.
According to Mwanda, his best friend told him that he should bury him sometime last year when he was the cabinet secretary.
While the public often described late Magoha as a bully, harsh and a no nonsense professor, Mwanda says his best friend had a jolly heart and those who were close to him know him as a soft man who could not hurt a fly.
Mwanda describes him as a very social man but at a particular level.
His best friend is now left with fond memories of a man whom they had already secured flight tickets with in order to travel to Siaya County for the burial of Magoha’s brother Prof. Alex Nyabera Magoha over the weekend.
