Kenya’s Ambassador to Qatar‘ Paddy Ahenda’ is no more alive now; he died on Sunday, April 3, at the age of 69, and this information came via his brother Gabriel Ahenda.
Treatment of Ahenda was going to a Doha hospital, and he was in the intensive care unit for one week.
As per his family interview, they took him to the hospital after suffering a stroke.
President Uhuru Kenyatta appointed Agenda as the Ambassador to Qatar in August 2018.
In February 2019, some rumors were suggesting that Qatar had rejected Ahenda as head of Kenya’s mission in the country, but the Middle East nation would later come out to deny the allegations.
Some three years back, in 2019, Qatar said that Ahenda’s appointment was approved by the country last year in October 2018, exactly two months later after President Kenyatta named him as Kenya’s ambassador to the Middle East nation.
Paddy Ahenda served as Kasipul-Kabondo Member of Parliament between 2006 and 2007.
Ahenda also won the March 1, 2006, parliamentary election on the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) ticket after the death of the then MP Peter Owidi, who had won the seat on a NARC Party ticket on December 27, 2002, General Election.
Agenda received 18,202 of the 20,671 votes cast, making him the party’s first and only MP in the National Assembly.
His nearest challenger, Gerald Otieno K’Opiyo, the former Kasipul-Kabondo MP, got 1,912 votes. K’Opiyo, who had been area MP between 1992 and 1997, ran on a NARC ticket in the March 1, 2006 by-election.
A low turn-out marred the mini-poll due to heavy rains and sporadic violence.
Out of the 63,523 recorded voters at the time, only 20,671 (32.45 percent) cast their vote.
In the run-up to the December 2007 General Election, Ahenda tried to win ODM’s ticket through Party primaries in November but lost to Joseph Oyugi Magwanga, who went on to win the election.
Since the tenure of Magwanga’s, Kasipul-Kabondo has had two more MPs; Silvance Osele of ODM (2013-2017), and the incumbent Eve Obara, also of ODM. Obara is the retired Kenya Literature Bureau (KLB) Managing Director.
Ever since his exile in 2007, Paddy Ahenda has made some unsuccessful attempts at recycling the Kasipul-Kabondo parliamentary seat, including in the August 8, 2017 polls.
Kenya’s Foreign Affairs ministry has lost three ambassadors in the past two years.
On February 16, 2020, Kenya’s Ambassador to South Sudan, Chris Mburu, died because of a heart attack in Juba.
On February 19, 2022, Kenya’s Ambassador to Nigeria Dr. Wilfred Machage, died in Abuja, aged 65, after suffering from a short illness.