On Friday night, as the last echoes of Jamhuri Day celebrations faded, Cyrus Jirongo picked up his phone and called a man he knew well.
“Papa, I want us to meet,” Jirongo told National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetang’ula.
An hour later, the two were sitting together at a restaurant in Karen talking, reflecting, catching up the way seasoned politicians do when the country’s long day is finally over. Wetang’ula would leave that meeting at around 9.30pm, believing it was just another conversation with his longtime friend and a familiar figure in Kenya’s political story.
By dawn, that ordinary meeting had turned into a haunting final memory.
Wetang’ula says he woke up on Saturday morning to a stream of messages — each one carrying the same crushing news: Jirongo was no more. It still remains unclear what mission Jirongo had travelled to Naivasha for that short period in the night and decided to drive back.
The Speaker narrated the last time he saw him, said the tragedy underlined a reality many try not to think about.
“Today you are here, tomorrow you are gone,” Wetang’ula said, describing death’s timing as “the secret God has kept from human beings.”
A dark highway and a violent end
Hours after the meeting, the road that runs between Nakuru and Naivasha became the setting of a fatal collision.
Police say Jirongo was driving his white Mercedes-Benz from the Naivasha direction heading towards Nairobi when his vehicle collided head-on with a passenger bus carrying 65 people.
The crash occurred at about 3.00am in Karai, a dangerous stretch of the highway that has become synonymous with high-speed travel, heavy night traffic and sudden, unforgiving accidents.
In the official report filed by the Naivasha Traffic Base Commander, police indicate that Jirongo failed to keep to his lane before colliding with the oncoming bus, ultimately blaming him for the crash.
Jirongo sustained fatal head injuries and died at the scene. His body was moved to the Naivasha Sub-County Morgue and later Lee Funeral Home in Nairobi, while both vehicles were towed to the police station for inspection.
The bus driver’s split-second decision
But behind the steering wheel of the Climax bus is a man who says he has been replaying the final moments in his mind.
Tirus Kamau Githinji, 52, says he has worked for Climax Company that owns the bus for eight years and was on his usual long-haul route travelling from Nairobi to Busia when everything changed.
He says the Mercedes appeared suddenly and moved into his lane.
In his account, the bus driver said the Mercedes was emerging from a petrol station along the highway and, faced with traffic on its side, overlapped into oncoming traffic.
Kamau says he reacted instinctively, attempting to avoid the collision but then saw the danger on the edge of the road.
With a bus carrying 65 passengers, he says swerving sharply would likely have sent the vehicle off the highway.
In that instant, Kamau says he made a choice not for himself, but for the dozens of lives behind him.
He held the bus steady, choosing control over panic.
“I decided to save the 65 people,” he told reporters at the Naivasha Police Station on Saturday morning.
He says it was only after police arrived that he learnt who was in the Mercedes.
“They told me it was Cyrus Jirongo,” he said, adding that the politician died on the spot.
A familiar name in Kenya’s political history
Jirongo’s death has stunned many because of the scale of his influence, especially during Kenya’s multiparty transition.
He burst into national prominence in 1992 as the leader of Youth for KANU ’92, the well-funded lobby group that helped mobilise support for the late President Daniel arap Moi during the first multiparty elections.
He later served as Lugari MP and a Cabinet minister, and remained a political figure whose name carried both admiration and controversy a man remembered for boldness, charm, daring strategy and a stubborn refusal to disappear from the national scene.
To his allies, he was larger than life. To his rivals, he was a shrewd operator. To those who watched Kenyan politics evolve, he was one of the unmistakable faces of an era.
A goodbye no one saw coming
For Wetang’ula, the loss feels personal not just because Jirongo was a known figure, but because their last encounter was so ordinary it did not register as a farewell.
A phone call. A meeting. A short goodbye. Rest before a journey.
And then the silence that followed.
As tributes continue pouring in from politicians, friends and constituents, funeral arrangements are yet to be announced as the family comes to terms with the sudden death of a man whose final hours began in conversation and ended in tragedy on a dark highway.
