Did Prophetess Nyaboke Predict Saitoti’s Death?
By Jeckonia Otieno First published by The Standard on 26 April 2012.
Prophetes Nyaboke at her shrine
A Nairobi-based prophetess claims her prophesies have come to pass but no media house has ever had the courage to run her story beforehand. We, too, approached her with doubt and conviction that we would prove her prophecies wrong. Wasn’t it possible for anyone to follow media debates and come up with political calculations and formulas? We set out to meet her two months ago. Clad in a flowing white robe complete with a black headscarf, Josephine Nyaboke welcomed us into her prayer sanctuary on the upper floor of her residential house in Kariobangi South Estate in Nairobi’s Eastlands.
See the future
The mother of five strikes a serious face for the cosmic world and claims to see the future about happenings in Kenya and around the world. Contrary to many prophets, or soothsayers, who put up in dingy abodes, she has a well-kept house with different rooms, one of which is her prayer room. She said there are no rituals performed for anyone to enter the sanctuary, so we took our places there for the interview.
Nyaboke, 46, told us how she found herself in the world of prophecy. It was in 1983 when she received “God’s gift of prophesy while working in a salon in Dandora in Nairobi”.
“I fell sick one night and my husband took me to Kenyatta National Hospital thinking I had pneumonia but all the while I was seeing visions. God wanted me to prophesy what would happen to the people of Kenya,” Nyaboke recalls.
When she left hospital, not feeling better, her husband took Nyaboke to her parents’ home in Koru near Kisumu. She was still seeing visions of people wearing robes of different colours each carrying a Bible and a cross.
How prophetess predicted deaths
Nyaboke, a devout Adventist then, lived in a trance for some time. Her parents thought she had become mad. They therefore called for prayer ‘warriors’ from all denominations around her home area and as they were praying for her, one woman stopped the others and told them how she had seen a vision, which was a clear message that God wanted Nyaboke to prophesy. That is how it all started.
On coming back to Nairobi in 1993, she went back to her salon business and life was never the same. Nyaboke claims that as she worked on clients’ hair, she would see visions about them and this shocked her and her clients when she told them about their lives. The clients would go home and share her messages with fellow women and day by day, women flocked to her salon to be told about their future. “My salon turned into a prayer house. I had to close it to concentrate on my calling,” says Nyaboke.
If some of the happenings in the country and around the world are anything to go by, then Nyaboke is into matters beyond human comprehension. She says she has prophesied some important historic milestones in Kenya yet she is never taken seriously. “I prophesied the fall of Kanu way back in 1999; I foresaw a new government coming to power in the 2002 General Election. I even foresaw the disintegration of Narc long before the 2002 elections,” she says pensively.
Also in her list of prophesies which she says have come to pass are the August 7, 1998 bomb blast in Nairobi. She also alludes to having seen the World Trade Centre being bombed.
It is only after these had come to pass that the media went to her.
Empowered women
In the past, before the current Constitution that recognises women, she says, she has seen visions of women being empowered more than they are today. She says the future is brighter for Kenya’s women. The most intriguing of her visions revolve around the political arena. She says God has shown her who is going to be Kenya’s next president but she is not going to say this yet. But that president in waiting is not going to have an easy walk in the park. That person must first fulfil some requirements; one of them being total reliance upon God and something to do with the moon, the sun and stars.
On his way out
In February, during the interview, she shared a vision she had had earlier. It was about the fall of a vocal Cabinet minister. When she told us the name, we thought it was far-fetched.
Surely President Kibaki can’t do that, we argued. She said it was clear from the vision she had had about the minister that he was on his way out — that he was ‘paying’ for his past mistakes but was yet to face more problems in the ministry he was to be shifted to.
And indeed the last reshuffle saw him removed from the all-important ministry. She also mentioned impending deaths of two prominent leaders. They were sick, she said, “and I am seeing people wailing…” A few days later news of the first death hit the news. The other followed soon after. She went ahead to name at least two others who are facing the Grim Reaper soon. .. and many more before the end of the year.
Back to politics and Nyaboke says the county faces hard times ahead. In her visions, she claims to have seen Kenyans carrying their belongings and hurriedly leaving their homes towards an unknown destination in search of peace.
How can we avoid this turn of events as a country? We ask. “We must all turn to God and pray for peace,” she says as she goes back to pray. . .and probably receive more visions.
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Its high time Kenya repents. This is the 2nd or 3rd time we r getting a warning.
Why Saitoti lived in fear
By Moses Njagih and Vitalis Kimutai
Internal Security Minister George Saitoti killed in the Sunday chopper crash lived on the edge, as if agents of death were stalking him.
In and out of Parliament he appeared to wake up every day determined to outpace any potential killer walking in his shadow.
He kept the number of friends who would know where he was at any one time or those who could drop at his home to bare minimum, and was never one to be found in the city social circuit at night. In security circles he was known for sticking to his trusted security guards for years, never allowing them to be replaced probably because of the extended fear of the unknown.
Sources around him over the years, reveal that the late Kajiado North MP extended his fears to the food he ate, and let it influence where and how he travelled, and whose hands he shook. He was sick for three months.
But in his Kajiado North constituency he appeared to let loose his fears and mingle freely with his constituents. Whereas in the city and abroad his aides had to check out his food long before it was served, in Kajiado he would just pullout his pen knife, or ask an age mate for one and proceed to cut off pieces of roasted meat for himself.
But according to his former security chief for 20 years, Senior Superintendent Johnstone Koech, Saitoti’s paranoia was not without basis and actually started off with a near-fatal food poisoning experience that traumatised and dogged him to the end of his life.
“From then on, four security officers would check his food throughout the cooking and serving. He would not eat anything that had not been cleared as fit for his consumption by his security team,” said Koech.
He added: “At the time of the poisoning, I was not with him. My colleagues were with him. He is said to have developed clear signs of a serious illness and he had to be rushed to Nairobi Hospital for treatment.”
It started in February 1990 in an Indian restaurant in Nairobi’s Muthaiga area. Opinion among investigators then was that he probably ingested cyanide gas, probably laced on his food or plate. Though Kenyans were never told who wanted him dead and why, Saitoti only opened up when retired President Moi declared the killers of his then Foreign Minister Robert Ouko “are the same ones who poisoned my Vice-President”.
According to Moi the poisoning was motivated by a conspiracy to overthrow his government. According to Moi and Saitoti, the poisoning took place shortly after Ouko was assassinated.
changed routine
Koech, who shadowed Saitoti for many years alongside Inspector Joshua Tonkei who also died in the Sunday crash, as well as others aides like the tallish Ole Surtan who died four years ago, says the former minister changed his routine and raised his level of security consciousness after the incident.
Saitoti would later tell Parliament his skin peeled off after the poisoning and a new one grew in its place. But it also seems alongside the new body cover, also came a different view of life and its risks.
Cabinet ministers Kiraitu Murungi and James Orengo alluded to this change in Saitoti after the horrendous experience.
Orengo said: “That is the reason he kept looking around from left to right whenever he was engaging in any conversation because of what those he worked with in Government at the time did to him,” said Orengo.
Kiraitu recounted felt safer in Masailand thus: “I was debating on whether to eat the meat or not because there was a ban on eating meat over the mad-cow disease, but he picked his knife and began eating. I said if Saitoti was eating who was I not to eat?”
Other MPs, who cannot be quoted because of the sensitivity of the matter and respect for Saitoti and his family, also reveal that the minister at times showed signs of unease wherever an explosion, even if a vehicle’s backfire sound, was heard. They also talk of the same experience when, say the loud speakers crackled or the microphone fell off during his rallies.
Nowhere was this evident, Saitoti’s associates say, than in Narok when he slipped and fell as he mounted the microphone in 2007.
In security circles he was silently called the man who feared sindano (needle).
bulletproof vest
This was because security officers had noted that in his quick and soft greeting, appeared to have been motivated by fear that he could be killed through a hidden poisoned needle on the palm of those reaching out to greet him. This could have been to him, borrowed the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by use of an umbrella’s poisoned tip in 1914.
To enhance his security and safety, he always put on a light bulletproof vest, something that seemed to give him an enlarged burst and tummy.
“It was his insurance and he never forgot to wear it. The minister was always fearing something would happen to him,” said another security officer, who worked with him for long.
His aides revealed in the 1990 incident Saitoti suddenly started gasping for breath and sweating profusely.
Nairobi Hospital’s medical personnel who attended to him later conceded quick action by his handlers saved him from death.
He is then said to have collapsed and became unconscious before being rushed to hospital.
Maybe fearing that whoever had poisoned him could follow him up to finish the job at the hospital, Saitoti demanded that he be immediately discharged from the hospital and taken to his home, when he came to.
Not even the doctors advice that he could not be moved as he was still sick and required close attention could break his resolve to go home. A recuperation room was then set up at his house and he was moved. After recovering, Saitoti downplayed the near-tragic incident until years later.
But even as he kept his tribulations to himself and very close friends, Saitoti narrowed down his choice of restaurants to a handful. The few places of choice were Tratorria and Tamarind’s upper-end restaurants in Nairobi’s city centre and Osteria restaurant along Lenana Road in Hurlingham area.
BROTHERS N SISTERS,I URGE U NOT TO NEGLECT GOD’S SERVANTS N TURN BACK TO GOD
AND NOW POLAR SHIFT IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN,ONLY BY REALIZING WHO WE ARE IS GOING TO SAVE US,HUMBLE OURSELVES TO THE MOST HIGH TO THE LOWEST LOWEST LEVEL.
What does she mean by “Kibaki cant do this”
Believe it or not!
i dont know wether to believe this or not,am just confused.bt prophetes,people like u won others,tel de future etc.kama ya vifo,mbona usiambie mtu kuwa utadie kwa plane crash au otherwise?sometimes ninyi ni bure
WOW I NEVER HEARD ABOUT SUCH STRONG PROPHESIES