Speaking to Citizen TV, the man narrated how he and others were recruited on Thursday evening under the impression they would disrupt a political meeting associated with opposition figure Rigathi Gachagua. It was only on Friday morning, he says, that the target changed.
“Akatuambia kuna shughuli ya Rigathi Gachagua tao,” he recalled, describing how the job was pitched as a two-thousand-shilling assignment per person, with each man instructed to source a motorcycle and ride in pairs.
Once in the city centre, their orders shifted. The group was redirected to All Saints Cathedral, where civil society members had convened to discuss the national budget. According to the confessor, plain-clothes police officers embedded within the group assumed operational command, directing the men on how to move and where to position themselves.
“Kufika huko tukaingia na ma pikipiki, hao mapolisi tulikuwa nao wakasema hii inachoma,” he said, adding that the officers initially ordered them to park the motorcycles and relocate to a nearby construction site believed to be out of range of CCTV cameras. That plan collapsed when one of the group members spotted surveillance cameras at the location, causing the officers to abandon the mission and the hired men to flee without receiving full payment.
The man says this is not the first time he has been involved in such operations, and that politicians are their regular clients. He alleged that those who commissioned the attack encouraged criminal opportunism during such disruptions, including theft.
His deeper concern, however, is the aftermath. Despite acting on instructions from a politician who remains free, he claims members of the group are now being actively hunted by police, with at least two already arrested.
“Kama mtu alikuwa hapo hatukujua itakuwa hivyo mpaka saa hii polisi wanakimbizana na watu,” he said.
All Saints Cathedral Provost, Rev. Canon Evans Omollo, told Citizen TV’s Daybreak show that the case had already come under political pressure. He revealed that one of those arrested was released following a phone call from individuals linked to the financiers, and that two complainants whose phones were stolen during the attack were each paid Ksh 24,000 to withdraw their reports.
“The said people who financed this stepped in to kill this case because of the publicity it has attracted,” Rev. Canon Omollo said. “The guy was released. Two people whose phones were allegedly stolen and went to complain were reimbursed 24,000 each so that this case is killed.”
ODM Party Leader Oburu Odinga weighed in on the incident, calling for an end to what he described as a normalised culture of political goonism.
“I think the nature of goonism where you have goons for hire by everybody, there are hired by both sides, that nature of goonism we as leaders should take care,” Odinga said. “We must make sure that culture is stopped in our country.”
Police have said investigations into the All Saints Cathedral attack are ongoing
