Once, Okoth Obado strode through Migori’s streets like a small-town monarch—sirens clearing traffic, lackeys trailing in his wake, and every out-stretched hand eager for a slice of his favor. Today he shuffles into the High Court in rumpled suits no tailor bothers to press, shoulders sagging beneath a weight no security aide can carry. His eyes—those once-sharp instruments of command—now flicker with the dull panic of a man who knows the cheering crowds are never coming back.
The fall did not arrive all at once; it came in bruising waves.
First, the horror everyone still whispers about: the gruesome killing of Sharon Otieno, a young, pregnant university student whose life was snuffed out before it had even settled into its rhythm. Obado, once untouchable, now sits in the dock as 42 witnesses—some of them old drinking buddies and political allies—prepare to recount the darkest chapter of his reign.
Then corruption charges followed, KSh 73 million allegedly siphoned through shell companies bearing the names of his own children and wife. The same family photos that once softened campaign posters are now Exhibit A in a graft case that stains every affectionate memory.
And if the murder trial and the graft indictment were not enough, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission has fixed the date—June 23rd. On that morning auctioneers will hammer away his mansions, his lush parcels of land, the imported SUVs he once parked outside village fund-raisers to remind everyone what power looks like. Soon those trophies will be scattered among strangers, each item a yard-sale epitaph to a life lived too greedily.
Watch the gallery now when he enters: there are no hushed tones of awe, only thin lips curling with disdain. The phone never rings. The gate to his palatial home groans open for hardly anyone but immediate family—people who cannot simply disappear, though some probably wish they could. The lions who roared at political rallies now circle from a safe distance, sniffing for new patrons.
Obado’s tragedy is not merely personal; it is a caution etched in bone and blood. Power that feeds on fear and patronage will, in time, starve its possessor. Loyalty bought with position turns to vapor the second the title is gone. And every unpunished excess left to fester eventually finds its day in a courtroom’s cold fluorescent light.
There is one lesson, brutal yet unmistakable: when the music stops and the convoy disperses, a man is left with nothing but the consequences of his own hands. For Okoth Obado, the reckoning has only begun—and the silence where applause used to be is deafening.
