MIKE SONKO ASSASINATION

Former Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko has claimed that his successor, Ann Kananu saved him from a planned assassination while working at Wilson Airport.

Speaking during the initiation ceremony of Ms Kananu’s son, Benjamin Mwenda in Ganga ward in Tharaka Nithi County, Mr Sonko said after gaining a lot of political popularity, some senior politicians in the country saw him as a threat and plotted to kill him through a plane crash.

He said when the politicians he did not name realised he had won the hearts of Nairobians and Kenyans at large through his good work, they planned to eliminate him.

He said after getting information on the well-orchestrated assassination scheme, he stopped booking choppers with his names and Ms Kananu could help him hire a chopper secretly for his movements.

He said the chopper could pick him up at an undisclosed place along Thika Road and take him to wherever he wanted to go without his adversaries’ awareness.

“The politicians wanted me to die in a plane crash but Kananu saved me a great deal by hiring choppers for me without another person knowing,” claimed Mr Sonko.

He said because of her great help, he decided to reward Ms Kananu by appointing her chief officer in charge of Disaster Management and Coordination in May 2018 and after her great performance he picked her as his deputy.

Ms Kananu worked with the Kenya Airports Authority, where she had been a security supervisor in charge of quality control and training for 13 years.

She was nominated as deputy governor in January 2020.

Mr Sonko said when former President Uhuru Kenyatta successfully plotted his ouster, they picked Kananu as his successor without knowing that they were great friends.

However, Mr Sonko tried to stop the swearing-in of Kananu as governor but the Court of Appeal judges ruled that his application did not meet the threshold to be granted the order.

The bench also noted that the issue of swearing in Ms Kananu was not among the grounds raised by Mr Sonko in his appeal.

Mr Sonko claimed that even after taking over the Nairobi governorship, Ms Kananu continued consulting him.