Exclusive: The 1964 Shifta ‘Plot to Kidnap and kill’ Tom Mboya

Declassified special branch record reveals an informer's report

In February 1964, intelligence operatives uncovered a startling plot: the Somali secessionist were planning to kidnap Tom Mboya, Kenya’s newly appointed Minister for Constitutional Affairs and Justice. The disclosure, now contained in declassified Special Branch verbatim informer record, sheds light on some of the challenges that the Kenyatta government was coping with after Kenya attained independence.

If this intelligence had come to light earlier, it raises questions about how Tom Mboya could have been gunned down in downtown Nairobi in 1969 as he stepped out of a pharmacy, unprotected by bodyguards. Mboya was, however, not killed by the Shifta but by Nahashon Njenga Njoroge who was convicted and hanged.