I dont Care About Conjestina - Mike Sonko Afunguka

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Sonko Says He Didn't Abandon Conjestina. He Says Her Family Did.

Mike Sonko is tired of being painted as the villain in the Conjestina Achieng story. The former Nairobi Governor says he was actively paying for her rehabilitation when her family, specifically her mother, son and aunt, walked in, took her out of the facility and discharged her without telling him a single thing. Now she is back on the streets and everyone is looking at Sonko. He says look elsewhere. "Her family is the problem," he said. Whether that is the full truth or a convenient deflection is a conversation Kenya needs to have.

"Her Family Is The Problem"  Sonko, Conjestina And A Story Kenya Keeps Failing To Finish

There is a video going around right now that is hard to watch.

Conjestina Achieng, Kenya's first African woman to hold an international boxing title, the woman we called Hands of Stone, the same woman who once united an entire country around a television set, is standing on a roadside in Yala asking a stranger in a car for money. She looks disoriented. She says she has been forgotten. And when asked about Mike Sonko, she says he told her to go away.

That video broke something in a lot of Kenyans. And it has now pulled Sonko back into the conversation whether he wants to be there or not.

His response this time was blunt. "I am not giving Conjestina any attention right now. Her family is the problem." He went further, saying her mother, her son Charltone, and her aunt had walked into the rehabilitation centre where she was receiving care, discharged her without informing him, and took her back to Siaya. He says he found out after the fact. He says he has been blamed every single time for something her own people keep doing.

And here is where it gets complicated. Because Sonko is not entirely wrong. But he is also not entirely clean in this story either.

The history between Sonko and Conjestina goes back years. He first got involved around 2018, flying her from Siaya to Nairobi for medical attention when her situation became public. He then facilitated her admission to the Mombasa Women Empowerment Network Hospital in Miritini. When she came out of that first stint looking better, he offered her a job as head of security at his Club Volume nightclub, then later switched it to a role as gym instructor and head of security at Salama Bling Beach Resort in Kanamai, Kilifi County. He posted about it. He flew with her on a plane. He documented everything.

And then she relapsed.

By early 2024, sports personality Carol Radull visited Conjestina at her village home in Yala and told Kenyans the truth. She was back to the same lifestyle. She was having good days and bad days. And despite everyone's efforts, nobody had found a long-term solution. Radull, to her credit, did not dramatize it. She simply said the truth and asked Kenyans to keep visiting and keep encouraging.

Sonko reacted by leaking phone call recordings he had with Conjestina's son. In them, he sounds genuinely frustrated, saying the treatment is expensive, the doctors are expensive, and every time they make progress, the family disrupts it. "It is wasting my money and time and it is not right. This is embarrassing and it looks like PR that I keep doing and abandoning," he said in one of the recordings. It is a rare moment of honesty from a man who is usually performing for the camera. He sounds tired.

He gave her what he called a third and final chance. She went back to the Mombasa Women Rehabilitation Centre. As recently as April 2025, Sonko was posting videos of her saying she had fully recovered and would not be returning to the village. She looked well. She sounded hopeful. She spoke about how relapse is a normal part of healing and encouraged others who were struggling.

Then came December. According to Sonko, her family showed up at the facility with filmmakers, took her out, and he has not seen her since. The next time she appeared publicly was in that roadside video in Yala, asking a stranger for money and saying Sonko abandoned her.

So who is telling the truth?

Probably both of them, in their own way.

Conjestina has schizoaffective disorder, a serious mental health condition that affects how a person thinks, feels and perceives reality. It is not something that gets fixed in one round of rehab. It requires long-term, consistent, professional management. When she says Sonko told her to go away, she may genuinely believe that. When she says she has been forgotten, she probably feels exactly that. None of that makes her dishonest. It makes her sick.

Sonko, for his part, did spend real money and real time on her. Carol Radull confirmed it publicly. The rehabilitation records exist. The flights happened. The job offer was real. Whatever you think of his motives, the investment was tangible.

But the family situation is also complicated in a way that a social media statement cannot fully capture. When a family pulls a patient out of care, it is not always malice. Sometimes it is fear. Sometimes it is distrust of institutions. Sometimes it is cultural. Sometimes they genuinely think they can handle it better at home. And sometimes, honestly, they are right that something about the arrangement was not working. We do not know enough about what happened in December to judge them fully.

What we do know is that Kenya has been watching this woman's story collapse in slow motion for over a decade. Since she left boxing in 2011, the decline has been public, painful and largely unaddressed by any government structure. She has been in and out of facilities in Kisumu, Mombasa and Nairobi. She once escaped from a rehab centre in Kisumu and walked back to Yala on her own. Her house reportedly caught fire. She has been filmed in distress more times than anyone should be filmed in distress.

And every time the story resurfaces, the same cycle repeats. A video goes viral. Kenyans express outrage. A well-meaning person, this time Sonko, last time someone else, steps in with money and a camera. Things improve briefly. Then something breaks down and everyone disappears until the next viral video.

That is not a care system. That is a content cycle.

Conjestina Achieng deserves a structured, government-funded, medically supervised long-term care plan that does not depend on whether Mike Sonko is in a generous mood or whether her family cooperates on a particular day. She is a national icon who gave Kenya some of its proudest sporting moments. The Ministry of Sports has been called upon multiple times to intervene properly. So far, the intervention has been speeches.

Sonko is right that her family complicated things. Conjestina is right that she feels abandoned. And Kenya is right to be angry. But the anger needs to land somewhere useful for once. Not on Twitter. Not in another viral video. In a real plan for a real woman who is still alive and still deserving of real help.

 https://www.maatribune.co.ke/2026/05/i-dont-care-about-conjestina-mike-sonko.html