For the better part of yesternight and today, the internet has been awash with opinions whether Sky News was right in their investigative piece about a stowaway who dropped from a KQ flight in London or the local media hold the right narrative.
In a battle to unearth the truth about the identity of the stowaway, whose body is still lying in a London morgue, two names have emerged, Cedric Shivonje and Paul Manyasi.
Paul was first revealed by Sky News, with the parents coming up with a different name, Cedric in the morning after an interview with KTN. However, one thing remained constant, the face.
Initially, Issac Manyasi and Janet Manyasi were identified as the parents, but today the surnames changed to Shivonje, evident on an alleged birth certificate of the stowaway.
Read: Man Interviewed By Sky News Reporter Now Says KQ Stowaway Not His Son [Video]
His photos are said to have been posted on a Facebook account named Cedric Junior, lastly updated on July 14, two weeks after the body fell from the KQ plane. Kahawa Tungu could not verify this, as it could not trace the account.
The narrative points out to a possible undercover cop whose cover was blown, killed by people he was investigating and dumped abroad.
The account of his girlfriend, whom they worked with at Colnet confirms that all colleagues knew him as Paul Manyasi. This is also confirmed by a vocal Facebook user named Betty Jackson Jesse, who says that he was once Paul’s supervisor at Colnet for two months. The post has since been pulled down, but here’s a screenshot:-
This points out to one thing, at the work place, he was known as Paul Manyasi, but this was not his real identity. His real identity was Cedric Shivonje.
Read: Kenya Airports Authority Ridiculed For Rubbishing Sky News Story On KQ Stowaway
According to his father, who spoke to KTN today, he lastly spoke to his son in 2017, and regularly changed his phone number. This means that he kept his family at bay, since they could easily blow his cover, especially on identity.
At the time he went missing, his girlfriend says that he “just went missing”, and his phone went off. This leaves a lot of loopholes.
First, while working at the airport, each staff always has a name tag to reveal his identity. However, when he fell from the plane, there was no tag, or even an identification document. How could these crucial documents get lost, yet he remained with the soda and water he had carried? His bag also survived the fall, but not even a single identification document was found.
Read: Nairobi-bound KQ Flight Forced To Turn Back Over Stowaway Case
Also, according to his girlfriend, he had a phone. Where did the phone go?
For security checks, there are cameras at the airport from all sides, and a security personnel inside the CCTV control room, who could have easily noticed Paul boarding the landing gear compartment of the plane.
If he was not noticed, the airport management could have reviewed the footage when the body fell to identify the person, and how he got there. However, they chose not to (since they probably knew who he was and how he reached the place).
This leaves one possible conclusion, the management was not in the business of revealing the identity, pointing out to a possibility that Paul was made to disappear.
Read: Times Of London Bashed For ‘Oxford Graduate’ Headline On KQ Stowaway Story
After the news broke, the response by Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) and Colnet seemed to offer no information to counter the revelations. In fact, they only issued the statements after the news, after initially refusing to an interview with the journalist who was investigating the case.
This leads to another possible conclusion: They hoped that the ‘truth’ would not come out. By the look of the statements (which look too emotional than professional), they were not prepared for such a truth to come out.
Waht/who he was investigating, if truly he was an undercover cop, remains the biggest question, and could be the biggest lead to investigating his death.
Read: Man Involved In KQ Stowaway Incident Likely To Be JKIA Worker – London Police
The state, KAA, Colnet are yet to confirm the existence of Cedric Shivonje in their company, while his family, which holds the opinion that their son is alive, is yet to prove it.
The son is yet to come out to prove that he is alive, which would have been the best move to bring the case to a close.
Without all these, it would be hard to prove the Paul/Cedric is alive.
Press statements might not work at this time, but a scientific prove would be the only way to bringing the case to rest.
The London police had already sent the fingerprints of the man’s body to Nairobi, but the authorities kept mum, raising more suspicion.
Email your news TIPS to Editor@kahawatungu.com or WhatsApp +254707482874. You can also find us on Telegram through www.t.me/kahawatungu