Listen to This Article Enhance your reading experience by listening to this article.

Former Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha’s widow and his son yesterday paid him glowing tributes.

Barbara Magoha described her husband of four decades as a man who was obsessed with success.

She said she has had accepted his death which happened on January 24.

“I will never complain. I had him for 40 years and I would be very ungrateful if I did that. I thank God and have accepted. We were a team. She watched my back and I watched his,” she said during the requiem mass held at Consolata Shrine in Nairobi yesterday.

“He was not perfect and neither was I and neither did we have a perfect relationship but we worked through it knowing that marriage is about 80:20 – 80 per cent meaning what the two share in common and the other 20 per cent is what may divide you so we increased the 80 per cent and reduced the 20 per cent in our lives and that way we had a perfect marriage,” she said.

According to Barbara, Magoha allowed her to grow and her professional career was of great importance to him.

His son, Dr Michael Magoha, also celebrated his father in an emotional eulogy.

“I realized one simple thing, there is one job where I am the only person who is actually qualified to talk about and did not have to work for this job and that is being his son. In keeping with his memory we all have to celebrate,” he said, fighting back tears.

Michael said his father was always available for him and  it did not matter that he was a surgeon or a Cabinet Secretary, he always believed in family.

He encouraged the congregation to celebrate his father’s life, saying he found it difficult to condense his entire life into 15 minutes.

“Do not look so somber, he would want us to celebrate. You know he always liked to be early for everything so we did not know it included his death but we keep moving,” he said.

Barbara said that in two hours, she turned from Magoha’s wife to his widow.

She said that on January 24, her husband was well and was planning to buy some things in preparation for his late brother’s funeral.

She recalled that around 2pm, he told her he was experiencing chest discomfort and she told him to rest. At 2.30pm, he asked for cough mixture and she showed him where it was and walked away because she was preparing to go to work.

While she was ironing, she heard him calling her in a stressful voice and upon checking, she found that he had collapsed.

She recalled that when he was revived, he said he wanted to see his son and at that point she knew that something was not right.

“He said, call me my son. Two weeks earlier he had said that if anything happens to him, I should call his friend Prof Walter Mwanda. So when I revived him, I first called Prof Mwanda and told him I needed to see him urgently in my house but did not tell him what was wrong,” she recounted.

Three pillars

She then called her son who was in theatre at that time and asked him to hand over since his father was unwell.

Barbara said that while Mwanda was taking the blood pressure, Magoha had another attack and after the fourth one, he died. She said all this happened within two hours.

She said Magoha’s life was built on three pillars, the first being his God, then Starehe Boys Centre, which molded him, and then his medical career, which saw him do all his things with medical precision.

Barbara said they met in Nigeria in 1980 and after one month, he started telling people that they were getting married.

She said that when they went to see her mother, she went into prayer and fasting for three days and vowed never to leave the church until she received an answer.

On the third night, she said, her mother had a vision that Magoha was destined to be a great man and she was allowed to get married to him.

“My mother came back crying and said her hands were tied and she gave my husband-to-be two conditions. The first one was that I had to finish my undergraduate studies. The second one was that if he married her daughter, he had to marry her too and he asked me what  that meant. I told him that from now on, I transfer responsibilities to you to take care of my mum and bury my mum if she goes before you. Since 1989 my husband made sure he paid for my mother’s air ticket every year until she passed on in 2008,” narrated Barbara.

She said her mother became a spiritual godmother to Magoha and when she died in 2008, he thought his life was over.

Also in attendance were some of Magoha’s colleagues in Cabinet, with former Lands Minister Farida Karoney reading a tribute on their behalf.

Magoha’s successor at Education ministry Ezekiel Machogu, Njuguna Ndung’u (Treasury) and Eliud Owalo (ICT), who read President William Ruto’s message of condolence, were also present.