Ashes to ashes: Atwoli slams son Lukoye over daughter-in-law's cremation, calls process 'demonic'

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust", the words have echoed through funerals for generations, a solemn statement that every life eventually returns to the earth from which it came.

However, Central Organisation of Trade Unions (COTU) boss Secretary General Francis Atwoli considers the way they make those ashes to be far from a peaceful matter of faith. It has become a very public rift with his own son.

The dispute erupted after Prof. Lukoye Atwoli, a respected psychiatrist and university dean, made the painful decision to cremate his wife, Maureen Nyadida, following her death from cancer.

Maureen's final wish was for her to be cremated.

Days later, his father was on national television, airing his objections in the starkest of terms.

Speaking on Jeff Koinange's Sunday Live, the elder Atwoli did not hold back. He described cremation as a practice tied to cults, branding it demonic and calling it something "satanic" that has no place within Christianity, Islam, or the traditions he was raised on.

“We had a very big problem with my son on that issue of cremation… That thing (cremation) is associated with a cult. It's a cult. It's something that is satanic. And I wonder why churches should be presiding over that,” Atwoli said.

To him, it was not a matter of changing culture, as his son had argued, but a departure from everything he believed a proper send-off should be.

“It is not Christian. It is not Islamic. It is not ours. It’s not a question of culture. Because somebody will tell you, “Oh, this is not an issue related to culture. This is a new thing,” like my son is arguing like that. I don’t even know how,” the COTU chief stated.

Atwoli revealed that he had hoped his in-laws would side with him and insist on a traditional burial instead.

Without that support, he said, he felt he had little choice but to stand by his son's decision, even as it troubled him deeply.

“And I can tell you, if the father of this daughter-in-law of mine would have supported me, that good girl of ours would have not been cremated,” Atwoli said.

He went as far as declaring that should his son predecease him, he personally would ensure a burial, not a cremation, back in Khwisero.

“Even my son himself. I will put my best foot forward. Well, if he happens to die before I die, I will make sure he's buried by Khwisero people,” the COTU boss affirmed.

Atwoli described watching family members record video of the cremation process. He called the scene "demonic," describing the ceremonial handling of the ashes as deeply unsettling and, in his words, not something anyone who believes in God would take part in.

The clip's spread online has reignited a conversation many Kenyan families have quietly been having for years, one about grief, faith, culture, and cost, all colliding at the moment of saying goodbye to a loved one.

Cremation remains taboo in many Kenyan communities, but it has steadily gained ground as an alternative to burial.

The reasons are as much practical as personal: burial plots are increasingly expensive, and the logistics of a traditional send-off can stretch a grieving family both emotionally and financially.

Kenya now has 18 cremation centres, with Nairobi's Lang'ata, Hindu, and Kariokor crematoriums among the most used.

Costs vary widely, from roughly Ksh10,000 to Ksh100,000, depending on the facility and materials involved.

The process itself; reducing a body to its essential elements through intense heat exceeding 1,000 degrees Celsius takes about an hour and a half and is carried out under Ministry of Health regulations.

Prof. Lukoye Atwoli and his late wife now join a list of prominent Kenyan families who have chosen this path, among them former Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore, Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai, and former Anglican Archbishop Manasses Kuria and his wife.

Others include former politician and the multi party founder Kenneth Matiba, pro-golfer Peter Njiru, former sports administrator Joshua Okuthe, ex-minister Peter Okondo, John Macharia, the son of media magnate SK Macharia, billionaire Jeremiah Kiereini and his son