Kenyan ‘miracle babies’ pastor dies in road crash

Controversial Kenyan televangelist Gilbert Deya, who claimed he created miraculous pregnancies, has died in a road crash.

Police told local media that Deya died on the spot on Tuesday evening after his vehicle was involved in an accident with a university bus and another vehicle near the town of Kisumu in western Kenya.

At least 30 other people were reportedly injured, including a person identified as his wife and a passenger in his vehicle, and 15 students in the bus.

Deya, who ran a church in London, rose to infamy in the early 2000s, following his claim that he could help infertile couples conceive “miracle” babies through prayer.

Investigations later linked his church to an alleged child-trafficking ring, leading to his arrest and extradition from the UK eight years ago after a decade-long legal battle.

He was acquitted of the charges in 2023 due to insufficient evidence.

On Wednesday, Siaya County Governor James Orengo said he had learnt with “deep sorrow and regret of the passing on of Bishop Gilbert Deya”.

He confirmed that the “horrific” road accident had involved a vehicle belonging to the county.

Photos shared online showed the mangled wreckage of one of the vehicles, which was completely shattered in the accident.

A former stonemason-turned evangelist, Deya moved from Kenya to London in the mid-1990s, where he founded Gilbert Deya Ministries, a registered charity with branches across the UK and Africa.

He was known for his charismatic preaching style and claimed to have been consecrated as an archbishop by a US evangelist in 1992.

His ministries later faced multiple investigations by the UK authorities for alleged mismanagement and legal violations, including selling olive oil which were falsely claiming to have healing properties.

He was once described by UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, then an MP, as a “modern-day snake-oil salesman who has conned and betrayed his vulnerable congregation”.

At his church, desperate women, some past their menopause and others who were unable to conceive, would be convinced that they would become pregnant through prayer.

But the babies were always “delivered” in backstreet clinics in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. The prosecution said the babies were stolen from poor Kenyan families.

In 2011, his then wife Mary Deya was jailed after being found guilty of stealing a baby from the main referral hospital in Kenya’s capital Nairobi and falsely stating she had given birth to the baby.

When Deya was asked in a BBC investigation in 2014 how the alleged “miracle” children had different DNA to that of their alleged parents, he said it was “beyond human imagination”.

“It is not something I can say. I can explain because they are of God and things of God cannot be explained by a human being,” he said.

After his acquittal in 2023, Deya maintained his innocence and continued his religious outreach until his death, reportedly at 72.