‘Sonko’ tells of stint as State guest, spills beans on pastor

Very few people know that Makadara MP Gidion Mbuvi Kioko aka Sonko was a guest of the State at the Shimo La Tewa Maximum Prison together with flamboyant televangelist James Ngang’a, the owner of Neno Evangelism Centre.

That’s what you get when you have politicians sharing the podium with a pastor in a church.

According to Sonko, he was remanded in custody with (Apostle/Pastor) Ngang’a at Shimo La Tewa.

This was after Sonko’s mother died. That was before Sonko even knew that one day he’d be sitting in the Parliament of the Republic of Kenya.

With the death of his guarantor in a case, the authorities put him in custody. He didn’t divulge the details of the case.

According to him, while he was in prison he left, just like that, to attend his mother’s funeral.

When he came back, an alarm had already been raised about a missing remandee. And so, he was arrested and taken to court.

“I looked at the judge. I asked him to tell the police officers to handcuff me. Then I told them to shackle my legs. I then asked the judge, how on earth could I have escaped in this state,” Sonko said last Sunday in (Apostle/Pastor) Ng’ang’a’s church.

That is Shimo La Tewa Prison. In theory, to break out, you need extravagant ingenuity, lots of luck and for the hawk-eyed warders to look the other way.

But to leave the way Sonko said he did, you need  a “miracle”. “We were with him in remand. But God works in his own ways. He’s now a preacher. 

“I left and went on to become a Member of Parliament,” Sonko said, drawing parallels about his getting out of remand with the Biblical episode with which Paul and Silas were let out of prison by an angel.

As Sonko narrated this experience, Ng’ang’a was visibly tetchy. Sonko was saying this to his flock.

The televangelist eventually stood and said that once you get into the service of God and repent, all your past sins are forgiven.

Sonko once publicly admitted that he was in remand prison with a certain auctioneer in Nairobi’s Industrial Area. He’ll keep on spilling the secrets.