Inside Kenya’s most-feared penitentiary is The Kamiti Maximum Prison where the most hardcore criminals in the land cool their feet.
Sitting on 1200 acres of land, Kamiti has risen to become one of the most talked about prisons in Kenya.
For a prison whose capacity was 1400 at commissioning, the penitentiary is now bulging with three times as many convicted criminals stuffed behind its rusty reinforced metallic bars.
Behind the same dark walls and damp floors, popular Kenyans like Raila Odinga, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Kenneth Matiba, Koigi wa Wamwere and many others have had stayed for years.
A couple more Kenyan politicians who dared to rise against the regime too, had their lives snapped out of their bodies at the same prison.
These included the famous 1982 coup plotters Hezekiah Ochukah, and Pancras Oteyo Okumu who were executed in 1987.
Sometie back in the year 1957, celebrated MauMau fighter Dedan Kimathi was executed by British colonialists at Kamiti.
However, the ’87 executions were the last Kenya has ever had after a Constitutional amendment abolished capital punishment by hanging.
State of Kamiti Maximum Prison
Since Former President Mwai Kibaki took over from the autocratic government of Daniel Moi, Kenya prisons have undergone magical transformation.
Hundreds of capital offenders have been released from prisons all over the country and the diet too has been improved.
However, not everyone enjoys all these benefits, apparently.
Televangelist Deya’s Experience
When he was first extradited from Britain over a child trafficking offence, Televangelist Gilbert Deya came face-to-face with the hard life of Kamiti Maximum Prison.
The controversial ‘man of God’ was taken from the ‘heavenly’ West London Woolworth Prison into a harsh and dilapidated Kamiti Prison where he lived in ‘sub-standard conditions.’
From his prison cell, Bishop Deya was forced to relieve himself in a bucket as a couple of inmates watched. Whats’s worse, he was supposed to empty the bucket every so often.
As evidence of the rot in prison despite the media being awash with ‘transformation’ stories, Deya carried the bucket to court.
“I was detained at the Punishment Block at Kamiti where some famous politicians such as Kenneth Matiba and Raila Odinga had been locked up. After my problems with the bucket, I wrote to the prison authorities and requested them to allow me install a flush toilet in my ward and they agreed,” he testified.
Bishop Deya was to later oversee a project that ensured nine more adjacent prison cells have flush toilets.
The inmates could now answer the call of nature with a little more dignity.
While Deya was released on the 23rd of May, 2018, he believes that his nine-month-stay at the penitentiary had delivered evident transformation.
Away from just the toilets, Deya was to introduce DSTV to the prisons after convincing the prison department officials.
While TV had been introduced before, a group of rioting convicts had dismantled all the TV sets, and the prison management had refused to replace them.
In 2018, there were some 50 TV sets spread across blocks A to D of the Prison cells.
VIP Treatment
At the VIP area of the prison, a hitman, a former police officer, and another Court clerk are serving life imprisonment for murder.
The trio have access to paid Television subscription.
“We have subscribed to a lower digital service TV where we pay about Sh1,000 a month. The accounts were opened by prisoners who are in Kamiti. I pay mine every month using mobile money transfer,” one of the inmates intimated to a local TV reporter.
For a prison where even the stripped white and blue uniform is ‘bought’, criminals who have no money are forced to walk around in tattered cloths.
Mattresses are also said to be thin, and inmates share the few that are available.