As recently as May this year, John Gakuo was being considered for the role of Nairobi Deputy governor after the unceremonious resignation of Polycarp Igathe.
But that didn’t happen because he went to Prison. On Tuesday, the countrt woke up to news the former Nairobi Clerk had died while receiving treatment at Mbagathi Hospital.
Prisons boss Isaiah Osugo Gakuo was rushed to hospital on Monday morning.
Before he was a convicted, Gakuo had made a name for himself during his tenure at City Hall as the Nairobi Town Clerk.
He is largely credited with refurbishing Central Park and Uhuru Park which he found when they were very dirty, unmaintained, and controlled by street urchins.
The face of the city also brightened up during Gakuo’s tenure as he made it mandatory for building owners to fix and repaint them before renewing their licenses.
Littering, urinating in public and violating zebra crossing and numerous other violations of city by-laws were punished by the council’s various inspectorate teams. Street lighting, tree planting and beautification of roundabouts were the other features that became alive in the city under his tenure.
Gakuo also reined in on the chaotic matatu industry at the time by occasioning the arrest of matatus that dropped or picked up passengers at undesignated areas.
But until his death, he was serving a three year jail term for occasioning the loss of Sh283 million in the infamous cemetery land scandal in Mavoko.
He was jailed alongside former Local Government PS Sammy Kirui, former Legal Affairs Secretary in the defunct Nairobi City Council Mary Ngethe and the then tender committee chairman Alexander Musee.
They were found guilty of abuse of office and willful failure to comply with procurement laws.
Gakuo’s fall from grace came not long after he was appointed to serve in Nairobi’s first governor Evans Kidero’s cabinet.
Just 16 months after his appointment on June 20, 2013, as the Water, Energy, Forestry, Environment and Natural Resources, he was fired. Kidero summoned him in his office on October 7, 2014, and verbally told him his services were no longer needed.
He tried to fight his dismissal in court by demanding that he be paid a full salary up to the end his five-year contract.
He argued that he had committed his salary to various financial institutions and had no other source of income to service the loans without a meaningful income.