09/09/2024
Justus Ndubi, Kakamega North Sub-County Director, died in his house this week after battling a depression related to his wife's death. He had failed to secure a transfer back to Nairobi to give her some attention.
Ndubi, a graduate of Moi University, was plucked from the discipline department at the TSC headquarters and transferred to Lunga Lunga Sub-county in Kwale in 2018, which boarders Tanzania on the coastal strip, and it is one of the remotest sub-counties in the region.
Ndubi, one of the longest serving staffers at the commission headquarters, was then having a sickly wife with a terminal illness. He asked the commission to consider reposting him back to the headquarters or any sub-county within Nairobi in order for him to provide care and support for her.
However, the commission decided to transfer him to Kakamega North Sub-county in the Western region. His wife died last year, upon which Ndubi wrote an emotional message to the TSC CEO Dr Nancy Macharia and the former staffing director Rita Wahome.
The message was widely shared and circulated among his colleagues and workmates on May 25, 2023 on various platforms.
According to his colleagues, the wife died alone in their Nairobi home. This death, according to his workmates, hit him hard and his character changed drastically.
They said he would show up at work late, missed crucial meetings, at times spoke to himself, and kept to himself quite often. He was also said to have isolated himself from his friends and family, raising a huge concern.
He also went into heavy drinking, a behaviour his peers say was quite unusual.
His colleagues said he had failed to show up at work on the fateful day. They checked on him at his house, only to find it locked from inside.
It was then that the police were alerted, who broke into the house and found his body lying in a pool of blood. The postmortem conducted later indicated that he died of cardiac arrest.