EXPLAINER: Who was Bishop Gilbert Deya

In a tragic road accident at Namba Kapiyo along the Kisumu–Bondo highway, renowned televangelist Bishop Gilbert Deya died on Tuesday.

Nyanza Regional Traffic Enforcement Officer Peter Maina said the accident involved three vehicles: a Toyota Noah driven by Deya, a Moi University bus, and a Siaya County Government vehicle.

Preliminary police reports indicated that Deya lost control of his vehicle and veered into the path of the university bus.

In an attempt to avoid a head-on collision, the bus swerved and overturned. Deya’s vehicle then collided with the county government vehicle.

Who was Bishop Deya?

Bishop Deya was a controversial televangelist known both for his charismatic preaching and a string of legal troubles that followed him for years.

A stonemason turned evangelist, Deya was born on February 2, 1937, in Juja, Kiambu County.

He lived in Britain from the mid-1990s until 2017.

He married Mary Anyango on December 27, 1958, when he was 21. They had fifteen children.

They later divorced.

In 2019, Deya said his former wife decided to divorce him following his extradition from the United Kingdom, a decision he accepted.

“We’re divorced. It’s my wife who has divorced me, and I’m accepting her decision and have no problem,” said Deya, who was extradited from the UK to Kenya in 2017 to face child theft charges.

He started the "Salvation of Jesus Christ Church" in 1976.

Deya preached in Kenya in the late 1980s to early 1990s but later moved to the UK, establishing Gilbert Deya Ministries in 1997—a church that claimed infertile women could conceive through prayer and divine intervention.

He rose to national and international notoriety in the late 1990s and early 2000s through his “miracle babies” claims.

His ministry, based in the UK at the height of its fame, faced serious legal challenges after investigations linked him to a child trafficking ring.

In 2006, Deya was arrested in the UK on allegations related to child trafficking.

This followed accusations that his ministry had been involved in illegally acquiring children from Kenya and presenting them as miraculous births to desperate followers.

BBC reported that on November 8, 2007, he was ordered by a court to be extradited from the UK to Kenya to face five counts of child stealing.

He was not immediately extradited. In September 2011, news reports indicated that all avenues of appeal had been exhausted and Deya would soon be extradited to Kenya.

On August 3, 2017, Deya was extradited from the UK to Kenya to face child trafficking charges.

He was immediately arraigned in court.

On June 29, 2023, he was acquitted of the charges.

The court ruled that the prosecution had "failed to establish circumstantial evidence."

Where Deya escaped conviction, his ex-wife was jailed.

According to The Guardian, Deya also faced a separate legal process.

In 2013, he was arrested in the UK and charged with raping and attempting to rape a woman and sexually assaulting a teenage girl.

The Citizen reported that in 2014, he was found not guilty on all counts.

Despite his legal troubles, Deya maintained a base of loyal supporters and continued preaching after his release on bail.

He remained a polarising figure—hailed by some as a man of faith and denounced by others as a fraud exploiting vulnerable believers.