A university don was brutally murdered on Tuesday morning at his Waware village, Suba North Sub-county, Homa Bay County, following a
prolonged land dispute.
Prof. Thomas Tonny Onyango Mboya, 56, an
Associate Professor and Director of the School of Mathematics and Statistics at
the Technical University of Kenya (TUK), was attacked while erecting beacons on
the disputed parcel of land, police said.
Police reported that his father, identified as
Wilson Onyango Opanga, was also attacked and left with serious injuries during
the incident.
The assailants, alleged to be brothers of the
late don, are on the run, police added.
According to witnesses, one of the assailants,
who had allegedly encroached on and built structures on the contested property,
became enraged after a court ruling directed him to demolish them.
Instead of complying, he reportedly stormed the
site armed with a panga, beheading Prof. Mboya before turning on his father.
Mboya’s father sustained deep panga cuts
during the attack and was rushed to hospital, where he is fighting for his life
in Homa Bay County, police said.
The suspects fled the scene after residents
raised the alarm, narrowly escaping a mob that pursued them.
Nyanza Regional Head of the Directorate of
Criminal Investigations, George Mutonya, said the late professor was in the
company of his father and was waiting for police and the area chief to arrive
and help in executing the order when they were attacked.
“By the time police arrived at the scene, the
assailants had escaped, but we are pursuing them by all means,” said Mutonya.
He said the attackers ambushed their brother,
killing him and leaving their elderly father with injuries.
Suba North MP Millie Odhiambo condemned the
incident, urging police to act swiftly and apprehend the suspects.
“The murder of Professor Thomas Mboya of
Rusinga Island is unfortunate. Violence never sorts out issues. May the killer
and any persons who may have aided or abetted in his death be brought to book,”
she wrote on her social media account.
His friends and colleagues mourned him as a
good man. Prof. Mboya was widely respected in academic circles. Born in 1970,
he completed his O-Level education (KCE) at Kokuro Secondary School in 1987
before joining Homa Bay High School for his A-Level studies in 1989.
He later pursued a Bachelor of Education
(Science) degree at Egerton University, graduating in 1993.
In 1994, he began his teaching career under
the Teachers Service Commission (TSC).
Three years later, he took a study leave to pursue a Master of Science degree
in Mathematics at the University of Nairobi, graduating in 1999.
Afterward, he returned to teaching before
joining the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) in 2002 as a lecturer.
In 2005, he proceeded to the United Kingdom, where he earned his PhD in
Inverse and Ill-posed Problems from the University of Leeds in 2008.
Between 2009 and 2012, he resumed teaching at
CUEA before moving to the Technical University of Kenya in March 2012 as a
Senior Lecturer and Chair of the Department of Statistics and Computational
Mathematics.
From February 2013 to January 2016, he served as the Head of the Department of Industrial and Engineering Mathematics.
