72 Facts About Mwai Kibaki

Mwai Kibaki served in various leadership positions in Kenya's government including being the longest serving Member of Parliament in Kenya from 1963 to 2013.

Mwai Kibaki had previously served as the fourth Vice-President of Kenya for ten years from 1978 to 1988 under President Daniel arap Moi.

Mwai Kibaki held cabinet ministerial positions in the Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi governments, including as minister for Finance under Kenyatta, and Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Health under Moi.

Mwai Kibaki unsuccessfully vied for the presidency in 1992 and 1997.

Mwai Kibaki served as the Leader of the Official Opposition in Parliament from 1998 to 2002.

Mwai Kibaki was born on 15 November 1931 in Gatuyaini village, Othaya division of Kenya's then Nyeri District.

Mwai Kibaki was the youngest son of Kikuyu peasants Kibaki Githinji and Teresia Wanjiku.

Mwai Kibaki started his schooling at the village school in Gatuyaini, where he completed two years.

Mwai Kibaki then continued his education at the Karima mission school, close to Othaya town, before moving to Mathari School between 1944 and 1946.

Mwai Kibaki instead attended Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, where he studied economics, history, and political science.

Mwai Kibaki graduated with a first class honours degree in economics.

Mwai Kibaki then earned a scholarship entitling him to undertake postgraduate studies at any British university.

Mwai Kibaki chose the London School of Economics, from which he obtained a BSc in public finance, with distinction.

In 1961, Mwai Kibaki married Lucy Muthoni, the daughter of a church minister, who was then a secondary school head teacher.

In early 1960, Mwai Kibaki left academia for active politics by giving up his job at Makerere and returning to Kenya to become an executive officer of Kenya African National Union, at the request of Thomas Joseph Mboya.

In 1963, Mwai Kibaki was elected as Member of Parliament for the Doonholm Constituency in Nairobi.

Mwai Kibaki's election was the start of a long political career.

In 1963 Mwai Kibaki was appointed the Permanent Secretary for the Treasury.

In 1974, Mwai Kibaki, facing serious competition for his Doonholm Constituency seat from an opponent Mrs Jael Mbogo, whom he had only narrowly and controversially beaten for the seat in the 1969 elections, moved his political base from Nairobi to his rural home, Othaya, where he was elected as Member of Parliament.

Mwai Kibaki was re-elected Member of Parliament for Othaya in the subsequent elections of 1979,1983,1988,1992,1997,2002, and 2007.

When Daniel arap Moi succeeded Jomo Kenyatta as President of Kenya in 1978, Mwai Kibaki was elevated to the Vice Presidency, and kept the Finance portfolio until Moi changed his ministerial portfolio from Finance to Home Affairs in 1982.

Mwai Kibaki had in 1978 rejected an offer to become World Bank Vice President for Africa instead choosing to further his political career.

Mwai Kibaki fell out of favor with President Moi in March 1988, and was dropped as vice president and moved to the Ministry of Health.

Mwai Kibaki was regarded as one of the favourites among Moi's challengers, although his support came mainly from the Kikuyu voters as the election was fought along ethnic lines, confirming a prediction made by both Moi and political analysts at the beginning of multipartyism.

Mwai Kibaki came third in the subsequent presidential elections of 1992, when the divided opposition lost to president Moi and KANU despite having received more than two-thirds of the vote.

Mwai Kibaki then came second to Moi in the 1997 elections, when again, Moi beat a divided opposition to retain the presidency.

Mwai Kibaki joined third-placed Raila Odinga in accusing the president of rigging the poll, and both opposition leaders boycotted Moi's swearing in for his fifth term in office.

On 3 December 2002, Mwai Kibaki was injured in a road accident while on his way back to Nairobi from a campaign meeting at Machakos junction 40 kilometres from Nairobi.

Mwai Kibaki was hospitalized in Nairobi, then London, after sustaining fracture injuries in the accident.

On 30 December 2002, still nursing injuries from the motor vehicle accident and in a wheel chair, Mwai Kibaki was sworn in as the third President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Kenya, in front of thousands of cheering supporters at the historic Uhuru Park within Nairobi City.

Mwai Kibaki's swearing in marked the end of four decades of KANU rule, the party having ruled Kenya since independence.

President Mwai Kibaki's style was that of a low key publicity averse but highly intelligent and competent technocrat.

Mwai Kibaki came out of hospital and addressed the public outside the hospital on TV in a visibly incoherent manner, and speculation after that was that he had suffered a stroke, his second, the first being said to have occurred sometimes in the 1970s.

Mwai Kibaki did not seem well, for instance, when he appeared live on TV on 25 September 2003 to appoint Moody Awori Vice President after the death in office of Vice President, Michael Wamalwa Kijana.

In January 2003, Mwai Kibaki introduced a free primary education initiative, which brought over 1 million children who would not have been able to afford school the chance to attend.

On 26 January 2007, President Mwai Kibaki declared his intention of running for re-election in the 2007 presidential election.

On 16 September 2007, Mwai Kibaki announced that he would stand as the candidate of a new alliance incorporating all the parties who supported his re-election, called the Party of National Unity.

On 30 September 2007, President Mwai Kibaki launched his presidential campaign at Nyayo Stadium, Nairobi.

One hour later, in a hastily convened dusk ceremony, Mwai Kibaki was sworn in at the grounds of State House, Nairobi for his second term, defiantly calling for the "verdict of the people" to be respected and for "healing and reconciliation" to begin.

Tension arose and led to protests by a huge number of Kenyans who felt that Mwai Kibaki had refused to respect the verdict of the people and was now forcibly remaining in office.

The European Union chief observer, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, cited one constituency where his monitors saw official results for Mwai Kibaki that were 25,000 votes lower than the figure subsequently announced by the Electoral Commission, leading him to doubt the accuracy of the announced results.

The violence continued for more than two months, as Mwai Kibaki ruled with "half" a cabinet he had appointed, with Odinga and ODM refusing to recognize him as president.

The accord, later passed by the Kenyan Parliament as the National Accord and Reconciliation Act 2008 provided inter alia for power-sharing, with Mwai Kibaki remaining President and Raila Odinga taking a newly re-created post of Prime Minister.

The cabinet was fifty percent Mwai Kibaki appointed ministers and fifty percent Raila appointed ministers, and was in reality a carefully balanced ethnic coalition.

Kenya's economy in the Mwai Kibaki years experienced a major turnaround.

The Mwai Kibaki regime saw a reduction of Kenya's dependence on western donor aid, with the country being increasingly funded by internally generated resources such as increased tax revenue collection.

President Mwai Kibaki was accused of ruling with a small group of his elderly peers, mainly from the educated side of the Kikuyu elite that emerged in the Jomo Kenyatta era, usually referred to as the "Kitchen Cabinet" or the "Mount Kenya Mafia".

Mwai Kibaki's regime failed to unite the country, and allowed feelings of marginalisation to fester into what became the post election violence.

Critics noted that President Mwai Kibaki failed to take advantage of the 2002 popular mandate for a complete break with the past and fix the politics largely mobilized along ethnic interests.

Mwai Kibaki's opponents charged that a major aim of his presidency was the preservation of the privileged position of the elite that emerged during the Kenyatta years, of which he was part.

In summary, the Mwai Kibaki Presidency did not do nearly enough to address the problem of tribalism in Kenya.

Mwai Kibaki brought order to the management of public affairs, a departure from the rather informal style that characterised the Moi regime.

Mwai Kibaki's push for free primary education remains an important achievement, as will the revival of key economic institutions such as the Kenya Meat Commission and the Kenya Cooperative Creameries, ruined during the Moi-era.

Further, the Mwai Kibaki administration was rocked by a corruption scandal of its own, the Anglo Leasing scam, involving his close associates.

The quarrel over the MoU directly led to the break-up of the Narc government, after which Mwai Kibaki showed Odinga the door and invited the opposition to rule with him.

The Daily Nation, in an article published on 4 March 2013 titled "End of a decade of highs and lows for Mwai Kibaki" summarised it thus:.

The passage of Kenya's transformative 2010 Constitution, championed by President Mwai Kibaki in the Kenyan constitutional referendum in 2010 was a major triumph and achievement, which went a long way into addressing Kenya's governance and institutional challenges.

Mwai Kibaki handed over the Kenyan presidency to his successor, Uhuru Kenyatta, on 9 April 2013 at a public inauguration ceremony held at Kenya's largest stadium.

Mwai Kibaki thanked his family and all Kenyans for the support they had given him throughout his tenure in office, and cited the various achievements his government made.

Mwai Kibaki was married to Lucy Muthoni from 1961 until her death in 2016.

Jimmy Mwai Kibaki has declared and aspired to be his father's political heir, though he has been unsuccessful in that endeavor so far.

In 2004, the media reported that Kibaki had a second spouse, whom he allegedly married under customary law, Mary Wambui, and a daughter, Wangui Mwai.

The matter of Mwai Kibaki's alleged mistress, and his wife's unusually dramatic public reactions therein, provided an embarrassing side-show during his presidency, with the Washington Post terming the entire scandal as a "new Kenyan soap opera".

In December 2014, Senator Bonny Khalwale stated on KTN's Jeff Koinange Live that President Mwai Kibaki had introduced Wambui as his wife.

Mwai Kibaki enjoyed playing golf and was a member of the Muthaiga Golf Club.

Mwai Kibaki was a practicing and a very committed member of the Roman Catholic Church and attended Consolata Shrines Catholic Church in Nairobi every Sunday at noon.

On 21 August 2016, Mwai Kibaki was taken to Karen Hospital, and later flew to South Africa for specialized treatment.

Unlike the Kenyatta and Moi families, Mwai Kibaki's family has shown little interest in politics save for his nephew Nderitu Muriithi, Governor of Laikipia County, from 2017 to 2022.

Mwai Kibaki's death was announced by President Uhuru Kenyatta, who issued a proclamation that Kibaki would be granted a state funeral with full civilian and military honors and declared a period of national mourning with flags flying at half-mast until President Mwai Kibaki is buried.

Mwai Kibaki's body was laid on a catafalque at the Speaker's way bearing the colour of his presidential standard and dressed in his trademark pin-striped suits.

Mwai Kibaki's body was guarded by four Kenya Defence Forces colonels changing shifts after two hours.

Mwai Kibaki was finally interred at his Othaya home in Nyeri County on 30 April 2022 with full military honors after a church service held by the Catholic church at Othaya approved school.