After Esther Wangare Colombini applied for an advertised job in Kenya, she was invited for an interview. She passed the interview and was employed as the Vice Chairperson of the Kenya National Police Commission and deputized  Chairman Johnston Kavuludi. About one week before she died, she called me and told me that she was in USA to see her children, who had remained with the father. She told me she wished to meet me to seek advice about something that was of great importance about the then head of police in Kenya, David Mwole Kimaiyo, and the then DP William Ruto, but she was not able to meet me then because she came in USA in a hurry to see her children while on her way to South Africa on an official assignment. She promised me that she would return soon thereafter when we would talk. We therefore agreed that we would meet next time she came to USA. A few weeks after she left for South Africa, I emailed her on a Thursday to see whether she had returned to Kenya. I waited for her reply on the following Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. 

The following Monday, my friend, who was also a friend of Esther’s, called me with horrifying news. He told me that he had just learned that Esther Colombini had died that morning. I asked him what had caused her death, and he told me that it was reported that cancer in her leg had caused her death. I couldn’t believe it.  I told him that before one died of leg cancer, one would suffer from the inability to move. I wondered how she had been able to walk and to work in such a serious condition.

But soon later, I learned more about how she abruptly became sick and how she died. It was on a Friday, the day after I wrote her an email when she attended a meeting of the National Police Commission officials, the then Inspector General David Mwole Kimaiyo, and other officers,  when she suddenly fell sick after drinking water from a plastic bottled that was handed to her. She developed a severe headache and had to leave the meeting.  After reaching home, the pain persisted, and she had to be taken to the hospital immediately. At the hospital, she was diagnosed with very low blood pressure. She was on treatment for low blood pressure when her two kidneys failed the following day. She died the next day, on a Monday. The only thing she took at the meeting before she fell ill was the bottled water. It is today believed that Esther Colombini drank poisoned from the bottled water, and that was what caused her death.

Government should investigate mysterious death of Esther Colombini, Deputy Chair of NPSC. (diasporamessenger.com)

Police Service Commission vice chair passes on – The Standard (standardmedia.co.ke)

President William Ruto has been openly boasting about how he would send Kenyans to Heaven. He has not explained to Kenyans how he would send Kenyans to Heaven alive without killing them first. Already, William Ruto has warned Judges. He has not explained what he has planned to use in dealing with the Judges. He has not released the names of those corrupt Judges he has been complaining about and neither has he given the names of the collaborators in the alleged Judicial corruption that he says is derailing his projects. With Ruto’s current design of appointments of Kenyans into various sensitive and powerful positions, whereby only his people often become the beneficiaries, the possibility that William Ruto would very much wish to replace the Chief Justice with a Kenyan from his community would not be ruled out especially today when the Kikuyu community which supported him in great numbers in 2022 have significantly reduced in number. The problem that Ruto would face is his security of tenure, depriving him of the power to fire a Chief Justice. There are worries about which method William Ruto is contemplating using to remove Chief Justice Martha Koome from office and replace her with one of his own. Is he considering using the sword, the Jaswant Singh Rai 3 way method, or the Esther Colombini poisoning way?

Dr. Isaac Newton Kinity

Counselor and Human Rights Activist