KENYA PRESIDENT
Nairobi, 30 April (EFE) .- The third President of Kenya, Mwai Kibaki (2002-2013), who died on the 22nd at the age of 90, was buried this Saturday after a funeral in his home district of Nyeri (centre) Funerals, which gathered thousands of people.
After the state funeral, which took place this Friday in Nairobi, the coffin, wrapped in the national flag and escorted by a motorized police convoy, was taken by road from the capital to the town of Othaya, near the town of Gatuyaini, where Kibaki was born on 11/15/1931.
In a large tent erected on the grounds of Othaya School (120 kilometers from Nairobi), the Catholic Archbishop of Nyeri, Anthony Muheria, led the service today, which was followed by thousands of citizens at the site.
The event brought together the highest levels of government, led by Kenya’s President, Uhuru Kenyatta, who replaced Kibati as head of state in 2013.
“Mwai Kibaki was the father of the nation and the father of many people in our republic (…). We are here to send our hero to his resting place. The trip we had with him is over because he was resting. We will continue to work with the family,” explained Kenyatta.
After four hours of funeral rites, the national anthem was played and Kibaki’s coffin – the cause of death was not disclosed, although his health was already fragile – was placed in a trailer towed by an army vehicle that took him to his home in Othaya, escorted by hundred soldiers in tails.
In a private ceremony attended only by family, friends and a few high authorities, the body was lowered into a grave to the sound of nineteen cannon shots, an honor reserved for former presidents of the African country.
Kenya’s third president was buried next to the grave of his wife Lucy Kibaki, who died in 2016.
Full name Emilio Stanley Mwai Kibaki, his political legacy dates back to his country’s struggle for independence in the 1950s and early 1960s.
He later served as a member of the official KANU (Kenyan African National Union), Minister and Vice-President, but left this formation in the 1990s to form his own party after the multi-party system was reintroduced in the country.
In 2002, after the end of the authoritarian regime of Daniel Arap Moi (1978-2002), Kibaki won the first opposition victory since the country gained independence (1963) at the head of the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC).
Subsequent elections in 2007 resulted in Kibaki’s re-election, but his victory was challenged by opposition leader Raila Odinga, causing unrest between supporters of the then President (from the Kikuyu ethnic group, the majority in Kenya) and those from Odinga (from of the Luo ethnic group), which claimed around 1,300 lives.
The crisis ended with the signing of an accord in February 2008 that enabled a government of national unity, in which Odinga was appointed prime minister and Kibaki retained the presidency.
Despite the dark episode of post-election violence in 2007-2008, Mwai Kibaki revived Kenya’s then-struggling economy, encouraged infrastructure construction and produced a new constitution in 2010, although he failed to root out the country’s endemic corruption.