Murang’a Governor Irungu Kang’ata.
That Murang’a Governor Irungu Kang’ata, a lawyer, represented some relatives of people who died in the March 2019 Ethiopian Airlines plane crash until they were paid is not in question.
Families received millions in compensation per victim. For each family that he represented, Dr Kang’ata got his pre-agreed share alongside his lawyer partners — as he told the Nation in 2024.
However, one questionable move has come to light, which involves a petition that was presented in the Senate at the time when Dr Kang’ata was a senator. The petitioners were employees working under Dr Kang’ata in his Senate office, and some are currently senior officials in the Murang’a County administration.
The eight were Mr Sammy Kahura Muriuki, Mr Eliud Maina Wanja, Mr Davis Mburu Karanja, Mr Noah Gachucha Gachanja, Mr Andrew Thairu Ngone, a person who cannot be named for legal reasons, Mr Abdallah Juma and Ms Ednah Njoki.
All of them presented themselves as having lost relatives in the crash. The first line of the petition submitted to the Senate in 2019 reads: “On March 10, 2019, we lost our family members in the ill-fated Ethiopian Airlines crash.”
In their petition, they stated that they had not received any “basic support for counselling and the requisite post-crash trauma”. This, they said, was “notwithstanding the fact that we were not even able to retrieve our loved ones’ remains for burial”.
They also stated that they had “agonised to get death certificates to no avail”. “We have made the best efforts to have the matters addressed by the relevant authorities all of which have failed to give a satisfactory response,” they wrote.
The petition first landed in the Senate’s National Security, Defence and Foreign Relations committee, but was later shifted to the Justice, Legal Affairs and Human Rights committee, where Dr Kang’ata was a member. One of the emerging questions is why that happened.
Another question is why a delegation comprising Dr Kang’ata, Nandi Senator Samson Cherargei, journalists and others used taxpayers’ money to travel to Seattle in the United States as a result of the petition.
The other question is: Despite the petition taking 853 days before a report was tabled, why did the committee present a report to the Senate that did not have a single recommendation?
On March 10, 2019, a Boeing 737-8 aircraft (Flight 302) with 157 people on board crashed in Bishoftu, Ethiopia, shortly after leaving Bole International Airport.
People walk at the scene of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 plane crash, near the town of Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia March 10, 2019.
In the Nairobi-bound plane were persons from 35 different countries. Thirty-six of them were Kenyans: 32 of them holding Kenyan passports and four dual Kenyan citizens.
It was a horrific crash where DNA testing was needed to tell who was who.
Dr Kang’ata represented some of the victims’ families. He told the Nation in July 2024 that he formed a consortium with some US-based lawyers “to sue Boeing”. He further said that one Kenyan family received as much as Sh1 billion.
He added that by mid-2024, victims’ families had been paid twice: first by the aircraft’s insurer and then by Boeing.
“The lawyers only got paid after the Boeing (second) compensation,” he said.
A month after the crash, Kenya’s Foreign Affairs ministry received 32 death certificates from the Kenya Mission in Addis. These were for the Kenyan passport holders, as the Foreign Affairs ministry would later tell the Senate. On October 14, 2019, remains of the Kenyan crash victims had been ferried to Nairobi.
The Foreign Affairs ministry made those disclosures to the Senate committee handling the petition. It must have been convinced that this was an ordinary petition where Kenyans present grievances and hope for a solution. But this was far from that, for many reasons.
First is the matter of the petitioners being Dr Kang’ata’s staff. This is contained in a letter by two of the eight, written on November 8, 2024 and sent to the Senate Clerk. The Nation understands that the two, Davis Mburu Karanja and another who cannot be named courtesy of an injunction he obtained in court, were not on the best of terms with the governor when they wrote the letter to the Clerk. Mr Karanja, for instance, had since left the governor’s employment and was involved in a number of disputes with the governor.
They stated in their petition: “All the eight petitioners were employees of the former Senator for Murang’a County.”
In his response four days later, the Senate Clerk did not refute that. Instead, he went ahead to explain what had happened to the petition from the point of its filing to its tabling in the Senate.
However, when the Nation wrote to the Clerk for a confirmation on whether the eight were working under Dr Kang’ata, he wrote back saying he would not reveal the information as “doing so will be exposing the PSC (Parliamentary Service Commission) to legal risks”.
On the floor of the Senate on July 2, 2019, Dr Kang’ata informed the House that he was an advisor for the petitioners.
“... I am one of the lawyers who are handling that matter. Secondly, indeed, the petitioners behind this petition are personally known to me,” said Dr Kang’ata.
He later said: “I am the one who advised the petitioners to come up with this petition. I did not want to participate in person, because of potential conflict of interest issues, since I am handling some other matters related to this petition.”
Why did Dr Kang’ata say the eight were known to him but not reveal he was their boss?
It was in that session that then Deputy Speaker Kithure Kindiki communicated a change in the committee that would handle the matter.
There was a lull in activity between July 2019 when the matter was placed before the Justice committee and July 2021 when the committee passed the final report, though the Covid-19 pandemic is implied.
It was during that lull that Dr Kang’ata travelled to the US as a result of the petition. He was with Mr Cherargei, who had at one point been a member of the committee before he was de-whipped.
When the report was tabled, senators questioned the trip.
Then Bungoma Senator Moses Wetang’ula said: “It’s ... distressing to hear that they spent public resources to go to Seattle in the US ... and then bring no finding.”
Kitui Senator Enoch Wambua noted: “You cannot travel to Seattle and hold all these meetings with all these people and come out with zero findings and zero recommendations on a petition as important as this one.”
Then Vihiga Senator George Khaniri said: “I want to know why the committee had to take a trip to Seattle to establish if death certificates were issued or not in Kenya.”
Hearses carrying the remains of the victims of the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash leave the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi on October 14, 2019.
Explaining why there were no recommendations, the committee chair, Mr Okong’o Omogeni, said it was because the issue was “a private contractual matter between the bereaved families, the airline and the airline manufacturer”.
“The committee will continue to engage with the Minister of Foreign Affairs to ensure that the process of verification of the next of kin for the death certificates which are yet to be released by the ministry is concluded,” said Mr Omogeni.
We reached out to Mr Cherargei, who said the committee’s travel to Seattle was a “fact-finding mission because we were opening an inquiry”.
Another strange development was that whereas the tabled report said the committee met the petitioners, some denied facing the team.
Lawyer Suyianka Lempaa, who is representing Mr Karanja, told the Nation: “My client denies that he was ever called by the committee.”
He wondered how much of a coincidence it would be that all the eight petitioners happened to be Dr Kang’ata’s employees.
“That information would make anybody raise [their] antenna,” he said. “[Mr Karanja] did not have any relative on that flight.”
Mr Cherargei was at pains to explain the non-appearance of the petitioners before the committee.
“From my recollection, it doesn’t mean they needed to appear physically,” he said.
Mr Karanja also claimed that the signature in the petition varies from his usual one.
“I don’t know even how my name got on the (petition),” he said.
He also wondered how it would happen that eight people working under Dr Kang’ata would all lose their kin in a single accident.
“How come all the staff were united in one tragedy?” he asked.
Using the eight names in the petition, we visited various homes in Murang’a County on various dates over the last few months to establish whether burials had been held in relation to the crash.
At the home of Mr Maina, locals could not recall any burial connected to someone who died in a plane crash.
A visibly startled Ms Jane Njeri, an elderly woman in Matharite village, asked: “Kwa hii boma? Sijawahi sikia (In this home? I’ve never heard).”
We also spoke with the area assistant chief on the phone. He denied any death having occurred from the Ethiopia accident. Two relatives of Mr Maina’s, who requested anonymity, expressed their shock that his name could be in a list of victims’ relatives.
We also went to the home of Mr Gachucha, an official in Murang’a County. At the home in Karung’e village, his younger brother Stanley Kamau was shocked that the name had been associated in any way to a plane crash victim. Mr Kamau said he had never heard of a burial in the family relating to someone killed in a plane crash.
In the US, Boeing is still facing trial regarding its faulty Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System that caused at least two high-profile crashes, including the Ethiopian Airlines one. One of the cases is ongoing at the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
Boeing has already issued an apology over the crashes and issued a considerable sum towards compensating the victims.
A question lingers: Did Dr Kang’ata use the petition to front undeserving claims?
In a lengthy meeting that the governor insisted should be off-record, he insisted that no money came out of the petition by the eight who were his employees at the Senate.
The Nation wrote an email to Boeing on February 26 asking whether any of the eight names were presented to it for compensation. In a response a day later, Boeing’s corporate media manager Leslie Thomson said: “We’ll refer you to the Ethiopian Accident Investigation Bureau for any information about the accident and investigation.”
We sent the email as per Ms Thomson’s direction, but the Ethiopian authorities were yet to respond by the time of filing this report.
On March 27, the Nation put the arising questions to Dr Kang’ata in a face-to-face meeting. He responded to the matters off-record, saying he did not want to self-incriminate. Suspecting that he was being politically targeted, he wondered why a 2021 matter would be raised now.
Via an email conversation, he insisted that we had no evidence of the claims that he got any personal gain from the Senate petition.
“Juxtaposing my name or my legal practice with claims of any irregular payments from the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash shall be deemed to be malicious, defamatory and intended to injure my standing ...” he wrote in a March 28 email.
It is worth noting that we have no evidence that the eight claimants got any compensation. We also note that we have no evidence of Dr Kang’ata receiving any monetary benefit from the petition.
Mr Lempaa said some of the legal issues that arise from the questionable petition include forgery and uttering false documents.
“Probably, there are other crimes committed under international law,” opined Mr Lempaa, who has been involved in online spats with Dr Kang’ata.
