Retired President Emilio Mwai Kibaki, who was buried on April 30 at his rural home in Othaya, Nyeri County, was an outstanding personality, who dedicated almost his entire adult life to serving the Kenyan public.

It all started in the early 1960s, when Jaramogi Oginga Odinga lured him away from his assistant lecturer’s job at Makerere University to become the executive officer of the Kenya African National Union (Kanu).

He left a salaried job for the volunteer position that would set him on his impressive journey that gradually led him to become the third President of Kenya.

Kibaki, who died on April 22, 2022, had been in poor health since the death six years ago of his wife, Lucy, his strong-willed partner with whom he had four children – Judy, Jimmy, Tony, and David.

The immensely talented Kibaki, who was a top student at Mang’u High School before joining Makerere University and going to the London School of Economics to study public finance, was tough, but was also compliant.

Many will recall how when he was already the President, the no-nonsense Lucy once dragged him to a TV press conference to declare that he had only one wife.

But it was common knowledge that former Nyeri Kanu branch operative Mary Wambui, who in 2013 was elected the MP for Othaya, had a close liaison with Kibaki.

Kibaki himself started out as the MP for Donholm, later renamed Bahati, in Nairobi. In 1969, he faced a tough battle with Jael Mbogo for the seat, and won, but later shifted his base from the capital city and was elected the MP for Othaya in 1974.

He was for many years synonymous with the annual reading of the National Budget, when he served as the Finance minister under founding President Mzee Jomo Kenya and later, President Daniel arap Moi.

He had started out as an Assistant minister, served as the Commerce minister in the 1960s before holding the plum Finance portfolio.

Having served on the government side, rising to Vice-President under Moi from 1978 to 1988, he would later resign and become an opposition leader.

Health minister

He had been demoted from the VP to a mere Health minister, which he took in his stride, before later crossing over to the opposition and founding the Democratic Party with his close friends, including Maasai nationalist politician John Keen.

Kibaki unsuccessfully vied for the presidency in 1992 and 1997. But he would later ascend to the top job when opposition leaders got together, and Raila Odinga made the famous “Kibaki Tosha” declaration at a rally at Uhuru Park, Nairobi, in the run-up to the 2002 General Election.

He would later renege on a memorandum of understanding that he had signed with Mr Odinga, breaking away from his new allies to team up with some diehard characters from his Mt Kenya region.

This would culminate in the bitterly fought 2007 presidential election that plunged the country into bloodshed, claiming 1,500 lives and the eviction from their homes and farms of several hundred thousand people.

But after being quietly sworn in at night in the State House compound in Nairobi, President Kibaki went back to what he knew how to do best. It was the efficient management of the economy.

When he succeeded President Moi, the country’s economic growth rate was a miserly 0.6 per cent, but by the time he left office in 2013, the economy was flourishing. The rate of growth was an impressive seven per cent.

Kibaki’s legacy that will live on forever is the country’s economic performance that restored its place as the leading nation in East and Central Africa.

Economic success

Businesses flourished and banks notched up sterling achievements, enjoying supernormal profits, and even ordinary Kenyans recall they had money in their pockets from running their small enterprises.

A huge physical symbol of his economic success and the development of infrastructure, under Mr Odinga’s docket as Roads minister, is the nearly 50km-long Thika Superhighway.

It is a magnificent architectural monument that his successor, President Uhuru Kenyatta, has built upon, with several bypasses across the country, the Nairobi-Mombasa standard gauge railway (SGR) and the Nairobi Expressway.

On the social front, the introduction of the free primary education (FPE) programme that brought into school a million children that would have dropped out is another huge achievement of the Kibaki Administration from 2002 to 2013.

If there was anything that Kibaki loathed, it was a personality cult that was the hallmark of many other African leaders of his time. He did not have roads or public facilities or institutions named after him.

An interesting twist was when he agreed to have a Sh40 coin with his portrait issued. But he made it clear that it was only for a special commemoration. No wonder, there was little circulation of that coin and many soon forgot about it.

However, following his death, his family and unnamed government officials are said to have been consulted and quickly agreed that the Kenya National Hospital Annex in Othaya be renamed Mwai Kibaki Hospital.

There have also been mounting calls to have the Thika Superhighway renamed after him. The old man must be turning so early in his grave, as he would not have allowed this to happen in his life.

Politics of insults

Many have eulogised Kibaki as the gentleman of Kenyan politics. He shunned the politics of insults, preferring to articulate his policies and respectfully differ with others. But he also had a witty tongue.

During the infamous Mlolongo (queue-voting) elections in 1988 that were clearly aimed at trimming his influence, he remarked that even rigging required some intelligence.

This was after the candidates with the shortest queues were declared the winners in some places. This was at the height of the Moi dictatorship and political witch-hunts.

Early in Kibaki’s political life, it will be recalled that he worked closely with the mercurial former trade unionist Tom Joseph Mboya to produce the country’s economic blueprint, the Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965 on African Socialism and its Application to Planning in Kenya.

But he was himself an astute businessman with huge stakes accumulated across various industries in more than five decades. His family is today one of the richest in the country, with investment in real estate, agriculture, and shares in blue-chip companies.

A keen golfer, who frequented Muthaiga Golf Club in Nairobi, near his city residence, Kibaki also had his favourite joint in Othaya Town, Silent Lodge, where he often went for his beloved White Cap.

Unlike many other politicians, Kibaki shielded his family from politics, indicating that though he was in it fully, he was aware of its potentially dangerous repercussions. Son Jimmy Kibaki appeared to have been readied for a run in the past two General Elections, but this did not materialise.

However, it is clear that Jimmy, who is now the leader of a political party, The New Democrats, which, from the choice of name, is close to his father’s Democratic Party, is destined to inherit his political mantle.