Former Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha is dead.
Magoha died on Tuesday, January 24 after suffering a cardiac arrest at home aged 71.
“Professor Magoha collapsed at home and was rushed to the Nairobi hospital. Efforts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful," part of his death announcement statement reads.
His demise follows his brother's death who died in December and was set to be buried on Saturday, January 28. The brother - Richard Alex Nyabera - who was also a professor died in Texas USA.
Magoha had been appointed Professor of Surgery at Maseno University's School of Medicine.
The University of Lagos-trained surgeon is credited with spearheading radical reforms at the University of Nairobi where he served as Vice-Chancellor during the tenure of President Mwai Kibaki. He was the first VC of a public university to be hired through an open process.
He served as Vice-Chancellor at the University of Nairobi (UoN) for ten years (2005 to 2015).
After he retired from the university, President Uhuru Kenyatta appointed him chairman of the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) in 2016. There he earned national admiration for coming up with processes that addressed chronic cheating in national examinations.
In March 2019, he was nominated as Education Minister, a position he took up with gusto.
Towards the end of his tenure, he always concluded his statements by thanking God for taking him the far he had. He said his position at the helm of the Ministry of Education had not been easy and he has had to implement difficult decisions in many cases.
“I believe strongly in God, and since I am very strong and extremely intelligent, God will find something for me to do. I believe so because there is a lot of work to be done in this country,” Magoha said on August 18, three days after the declaration of the presidential election results.
“Like I have said previously, I do not look for jobs; jobs look for me. And you know why. Wherever I have been, you can actually measure what I have done. There are very few Kenyans who deliver like that,” Magoha, an alumnus of the Starehe Boys Centre, said in his self-assessment.
