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Kenya’s Third President Emilio Stanley Mwai Kibaki is dead.
Kibaki was born on November 15, 1931.
He served as the third President of Kenya from December 2002 to April 2013.
He was the last born of Teresia Wanjiku’s offspring – but had younger siblings from his father’s second wife.
He is an alumnus of six schools, Gatuyaini Primary School, Karima Mission School, Nyeri High School, Mangu School, Makerere University, and the London School of Economics.
His childhood ambition was to become a soldier.
When in his final year at Mangu (1950), the government banned members of the Gikuyu, Embu, and Meru communities from joining the army due to instability linked to Mau Mau oaths.
He is a staunch Catholic who mostly attended catholic schools in his formative years.He was baptised Emilio Stanley Mwai Kibaki. In 1955, he graduated with a First Class Honours Degree (BA) in Economics.
His first job after university was in Uganda as an assistant manager at Shell East Africa. In 1957, he became the first African to graduate with a first-class degree from the London School of Economics.
He got married at the age of 30 in 1961 to Lucy Muthoni Kagai (later First Lady Lucy Kibaki). He has four children – Judy, Jimmy, Tony and DavidKibaki had served as the fourth Vice President of Kenya for ten years from 1978 to 1988 under President Daniel Arap Moi.
He also held cabinet positions in the Kenyatta and Moi governments, including time as minister for Finance (1969–1981), Minister for Home Affairs (1982–1988), and Minister for Health (1988–1991).
The late retired President served as an opposition Member of Parliament from 1992 to 2002. But in 1992 and 1997 he unsuccessfully vied for the presidency and lost to Moi.
He served as the Leader of the Official Opposition in Parliament from 1998 to 2002. In the 2002 presidential election, he was elected as President of Kenya.
Kibaki occupied a special place in Kenyan history, not just as its third president, but also as one of the most influential figures in African history.