Narc-Kenya party leader Martha Karua has shared harrowing little-known details about how she escaped death by a whisker a few days after the National Rainbow Coalition romped to victory in 2002.
In her memoir “Against the Tide”, Karua recounts the last moments before the January 24, 2003, Busia plane crash that claimed the life of the then Labour minister Ahmad Mohammed Khalif.
Two pilots; Sammy Mungai and Abdikadir Kuto also died in the accident.
Karua alongside Khalif two other ministers Raphael Tuju, Linah Kilimo, some MPs and activists including current Chief Justice Martha Koome were on a trip to celebrate the homecoming ceremony of the then minister Moody Awori.
“After the naming of the Cabinet and with the Rainbow euphoria still in the air, the NARC team and especially the Cabinet ministers started holding victory celebrations, homecoming parties, she says.
On the fateful day, she narrates that they took a flight from Wilson Airport to Busia Airstrip where they landed safely and headed to Awori’s home for the ceremony.
On their way back after the event, she explains that together with Koome they used Attorney General Amos Wako's back to the airstrip.
“Wako had requested that we stop by his mother’s house. From there, he also suggested we pass by his house briefly which was along the way and we again obliged,” she states.
“I distinctly remember Tuju asking the pilot if the runway was not too short for the aircraft. The pilot assured us that the pilot had a mechanism for accelerated take-off which he would deploy.”
The ill-fated plane, she says, was to take a detour to Kisumu Airport to drop off those who were to proceed to Raila Odinga’s Bondo home for a similar event set for the following day.
Inside the plane, Karua explains that she engaged Khalif in a conversation about why he had kept them waiting and he answered he had been at a nearby mosque.
“With a light touch, I expressed my hope that he had prayed for us all,” Karua says.
A few moments after take-off, Karua says she recalls reminding Koome who was seated behind her on the opposite row to keep in mind that they were airborne.
“These are the last words I recall before the plane crash,” she narrates noting she woke up later in a hospital bed.
She also remembers meeting Wako and the then Trade Minister Mukhisa Kituyi at Busia Hospital where she had been transferred.
According to her, she later learned that the accident was devastating and everyone thought she had been killed.
She notes that she could not be accounted for because the rescuers took them to a nearby facility.
“For a while, we were feared dead, but there was no trace of the bodies at the scene of the crash.”
Until now, Karua says she has not known who took her to Tabaka Mission Hospital but “I know that were it not for the Good Samaritans, I would not be have received the life-saving stabilisation and care”.
The 24-seater Gulfstream executive jet had just taken off at the Busia airstrip when it hit an electric pole bringing it down on top of a house.
Karua would later be airlifted to Nairobi Hospital for specialised treatment and after four days she was out.
