Jomo Kenyatta would know what you were thinking by looking at you - Lee Njiru

Former State House Press Secretary Lee Njiru has spoken on the mystery surrounding the life and death of Kenya's founding President, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta.

Njiru, who served as Press Secretary for more than 46 years, says that Kenyatta was a mysterious man believed to exhibit mystical powers and as such, people around him and his close confidants feared him.

In an interview on Citizen TV's JKLive Show on Wednesday, Kenyatta’s then-information officer opined that the first President’s death in 1978 could have been prevented if people had set aside the said myths and prioritised his health.

Njiru, who seemingly blames the Kenyan Constitution at the time for not setting up ways of dealing with a President’s sickness, said that it was even ‘treasonable’ to imagine the Head of State being sick.

“I ask myself upto today, what was that compulsion that was more important than Kenyatta’s health? They should have done more for him…that is a question that they have never answered,” he said.

“I think it is the Constitution of Kenya which is to blame because, at that time, the Constitution demanded that nobody should imagine the death of a President, and people took it literally; people never thought Kenyatta would die.”

According to Njiru, before Kenyatta assumed power after independence, some of the myths surrounding his life, as portrayed in his book ‘Facing Mount Kenya,’ slowly materialised and became legends which shielded people from seeing him for who he was.

He noted that it was believed that Kenyatta, being the psychologist he purported to be in his book, could even look at a person’s forehead and know what they were thinking.

This, Njiru said, led to many people living in fear towards him, and thus even when he was on his deathbed, no one dared to imagine that he could die.

“You were never allowed to imagine the death of a president. It was treasonable. They would string you up if they knew you were thinking about the death of a president. People feared Jomo Kenyatta because in his book ‘Facing Mount Kenya’ there is a paragraph where he describes himself as a psychologist. He said he married his first wife Grace Wahu in 1919 by using magic, he has written it,” he said.

"When Kenyatta was in prison, he was mystified and we were even told that if Kenyatta looked at you like this, he would know what you are thinking and we were told that his eyes would be on the forehead.”

Njiru’s remarks come even as he continues to point blaming fingers at Kenyatta’s close confidants for his death.

In a past interview, he revealed that then Minister for State Mbiyu Koinange and Coast Provincial Commissioner Eliud Mahihu neglected their duty to safeguard the first President's welfare as was their sworn duty.

He said that prior to his death at a function in Msambweni, Koinange and Mahihu had intel that Kenyatta was unwell but did not act on safeguarding his welfare.