NAIROBI, Kenya Jan 24 – Former Education Cabinet Secretary Professor George Magoha was mourning his brother, when he died on Tuesday evening.
His brother Professor Richard Alex Nyabera Magoha died in the US on December 6, 2022 and was due to be buried in their rural home in Yala on January 28, according to an orbituary put up on the Daily Nation newspaper.
No further details were provided on the cause of his death.
And as plans for his burial were underway, the former Education Cabinet Secretary fell ill at home and was rushed to Nairobi Hospital where he passed on, sending the family to more shock.
“It is with great regret that we announce the sudden and untimely demise of Prof. George Magoha this evening at the Nairobi Hospital,” a statement from the hospital’s CEO James Nyamongo stated, adding “Efforts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful.”
Magoha served as Cabinet Secretary for Education in former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government.
Prior to this appointment to the cabinet, Magoha chaired the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) from 2016 to 2019 which he joined from the University of Nairobi where he had been the Vice-Chancellor since 2005 to 2015.
Upon leaving the government, Magoha was named a professor of surgery at Maseno University School of Medicine.
President William Ruto mourned Prof. Magoha as a “towering giant of our time, a great man who stood tall in the academy, where he excelled in learning, teaching and research, as well as in administration.”
He hailed him for leading “robust turnaround interventions at the University of Nairobi and the Kenya National Examinations Council.”
