Macharia Margaret Nduta, 37, has been sentenced to death in Vietnam.
Seated on a hewn stone outside her house in Weithaga village, Murang’a County, Purity Wangui is in a headspin.
If the daughter she raised a staunch Christian does not challenge a conviction for drug trafficking by midnight on March 12, then the Vietnam government will start making arrangements to execute Margaret Nduta, 37, likely by lethal injection.
On March 6, Nduta was found guilty of trafficking two kilos of cocaine through Vietnam and sentenced to death. She was arrested in July, 2023 on her way to Laos.
Margaret Nduta, the 37 year old Murang'a woman who was condemned to hang on March 6, 2025 in Vietnam for drug trafficking related charges.
Nduta’s mother is desperate to get to Ho Chi Minh City in the hope that she can get one last face-to-face with her daughter. At the same time, she wonders how her daughter got mixed up in an international narcotics syndicate.
“I am waiting for some family members to volunteer to accompany me there. It does not matter how long it takes ... I must see her before they hang her,” Wangui says, aware that she has no financial capacity to travel to Vietnam on such short notice.
Made aware by a neighbour that the distance from Murang’a to Vietnam is about 8,100 kilometres, she retorts: “What is the distance from my womb to the world all this long I have been her mother?”
Trauma
The potent mix of trauma and desperation has pushed Wangui to disregard even the impossible as she talks of walking to Ho Chi Minh.
She says her daughter was born again, dutiful and God-fearing.
“Maybe she was framed, or she got into bad company. I have brought her up with strict Christian values ... I am sorry on her behalf. I urge President William Ruto, through my MP Ndindi Nyoro, to take up her case, let my daughter be brought back home and jailed here,” a distraught Wangui says.
Vietnam is known as a major hub for drug trafficking in the Golden Triangle, a region where China, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar meet. The region is the second-largest drug-producing area in the world. The country’s 2,300km border with neighbouring states makes it a convenient route for gangs to smuggle drugs.
Smugglers find Ho Chi Minh City an attractive transit point because of its proximity to Cambodia.
Alex Murumba, who introduced himself as a relative, urged Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi to invoke bilateral diplomacy to bring Nduta back home.
“We are devastated as a family. We are not sure that Nduta, who we know as a straightforward daughter who only ventured out of the country in 2023 to seek her fortune, became a drug peddler,” he says.
Death penalty
The family, he adds, is frustrated that she was sentenced on March 6 and given a week to lodge an appeal or face the hangman.
In Vietnam, anyone found guilty of possessing or smuggling more than 600 grams of heroin or cocaine, or more than 2.5 kilos of methamphetamines faces the death penalty.
“We learnt of the sentencing on March 8. Today is March 11. It means we only have until March 12 to help her appeal. The government should help us do so,” Mr Murumba says.
Murang’a Senator Joe Nyutu on Tuesday said the government should “help Nduta appeal, win the case and be reunited with her family”.
In her defence, Nduta said she had been hired by a man known only as John from Kenya “to deliver a suitcase to a woman who was to meet me at the airport and in turn, receive a parcel that I was to deliver back”. She revealed that she had received Sh167,000 as advance pay besides having her flight tickets fully paid.
She was cleared at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, as well as Ethiopia and Qatar’s airports. She said she was therefore surprised to be arrested at the Ho Chi Minh.
