Not even the military could be trusted by Mwai Kibaki’s inner circle as the president-elect, who was on a wheelchair, made his way to Uhuru Park for the formalities of Kenya’s most momentous political transition in 2003.
Mr Kibaki had been involved in a road accident barely three weeks to the 2002 General Election and after his emphatic win, his inner circle was nervous about leaving him under the care of the military on the day he was to be sworn-in and take over power from Daniel arap Moi, whose 24-year rule was coming to an end.
Mr Kibaki’s personal physician Dan Gikonyo, in his new book, Doctor at Heart , has lifted the lid on the fears expressed by Mr Kibaki’s National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) team who believed until the last minute that Moi had a secret plan to sabotage the transition.
“We arrived at Uhuru Park to a sea of humanity. I was pushing the wheelchair. Although protocol demanded that I hand over the chair to the military at the park, I was given other instructions by our Narc team; not to let go of the chair! We did not have much trust in the Moi government, and even during this crucial moment, we were afraid that anything could still happen before Kibaki was sworn in. None of us was ready to take chances. And so, following the instructions to the letter, I pushed the wheelchair dutifully to the dais and sat behind the President-elect, making sure that the plastered leg was well supported,” writes Dr Gikonyo.
Dr Gikonyo’s book, Doctor at Heart, also paints a picture of the resentment that was shown towards the outgoing president by the masses that day.
“As Moi rose up to hand over the instruments of power, including the sword, to Kibaki, I felt a pebble hit me on the face. I thought it was accidental. But, as more mud pellets were hurled to the dais, it turned out to be a reality. The crowd started booing and heckling at the outgoing president. The mud pellets flew all over the dais,” he writes.
Doctor at Heart, published by Kenway Publications, an imprint of East African Educational Publishers (EAEP), offers readers the perspective of the doctor in the room when many vital decisions were made affecting Kenya and its leaders.
Before Mr Kibaki’s 2002 win, a need arose to have him treated in London, and Dr Gikonyo reveals how Raila Odinga pulled all the stops to ensure Mr Kibaki was flown there.
Dr Dan Gikonyo with his wife Dr Betty Gikonyo during the launch of his book titled ‘Doctor at heart’ at Sarit Center, Nairobi on September 25, 2024.
Photo credit: Lucy Wanjiru | Nation Media Group
Dr Gikonyo writes of how Mr Odinga’s interventions ensured speedy travel to London when any delay would have been detrimental to the health of the 71-year-old leader. He had fractured various bones in the crash.
The book reveals that two days after the crash, doctors decided to fly Mr Kibaki to London for further medical examination and treatment. This is when Mr Raila Odinga, who had emphatically endorsed Mr Kibaki, swung into action.
“Raila had by now assumed the position of the captain. As the new captain, he was onsite at the airport where several hurdles needed to be overcome,” writes Dr Gikonyo.
He says Kenya Airways had given them a space at the back of the plane but Mr Odinga explained to them that “our patient, the incoming President of Kenya, cannot ride in the back section of the plane”.
“We needed space in the first-class area at the front of the plane. However, the airline staff was not very supportive. ‘In that case you have to pay for three first-class seats,’ the staff emphasised, demanding a cash payment there and then,” writes Dr Gikonyo.
“Not one to be defeated where an urgent need required a quick solution, Raila immediately raised the money for the seats.”
The next hurdle was how to push the stretcher to the front of the plane, given the aircraft’s narrow aisle.
It was at this point that Mr Odinga “gathered a number of young muscular Narc supporters who carried the stretcher on their knees above the seats to the front of the plane.”
The book also carries Kibaki’s hitherto unpublished interview with Shaka Ssali of Voice of America (VoA), which he conducted three years to his ascension to power, which gives a peek into Mwai Kibaki’s famed economics acumen.
Asked what he thought was the most important decision he ever made in his political career, Mr Kibaki answered that as Finance Minister, he wanted the country to evolve to a point where Kenya would not need to borrow from international institutions.
“We got very nearly there. The reason for that was we were saving; we were encouraging Kenyans to do the saving. And during those periods, Kenyans were saving a quarter of their national income and ploughing it back into the economy,” Mr Kibaki told VoA.
As president, Mr Kibaki oversaw one of the highest economic revivals (from 0.6 in 2002 to 7.1 by the end of his first term.)
Dr Gikonyo also treated Kenya’s founding vice-president Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, who later became the doyen of Opposition politics, whom he describes as “a really jolly old gentleman” who had great stories to tell.
“One exciting story that he told me, was about the day he declined to become the Prime Minister for the last time, the morning Jomo Kenyatta was released from restriction in Maralal. Jaramogi told me how he was summoned to Government House, the current State House in Nairobi, by the colonial governor Sir Patrick Renison, on Monday morning, on August 21, 1961. The meeting presented to him a last chance of becoming Kenya’s Prime Minister.”
That Jaramogi declined to be Kenya’s leader at independence, instead asking for Jomo Kenyatta’s release, has been much touted, but Dr Gikonyo’s account is one of the few to put a setting and context into this history-changing event.
“The governor pleaded with him to accept the position, which he declined. As he revealed to me, having declined, the governor walked him around the lawns of the Government House, and at dawn, the governor told him: ‘You see that plane in the sky? It is the one bringing Jomo Kenyatta home,’” details Dr Gikonyo.
He asserts that Jaramogi was a great statesman who sacrificed for Jomo Kenyatta’s freedom and his ascension into power.
Mwai Kibaki, who was at the time Narc presidential candidate, during a campaign rally while on a wheelchair at Uhuru Park, Nairobi.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
To read an autobiography of a man born on the cusp of the Mau Mau rebellion who literally wormed his way to the hearts of most of the architects of the multiparty clamour is to read the story of Kenya as seen through the lenses of this participant observer who Kisumu Governor Prof Anyang Nyong’o describes in the foreword as a reluctant politician.
The cardiologist, a life member of Mr Kibaki’s Democratic Party, also writes of the turmoil and convulsions of the struggle to oust Moi from power, and his own unsuccessful attempts to have his patients, the lead casts of the epic drama, unite and present a more formidable force against Mr Moi.
Dr Gikonyo’s journey with Kibaki had started much earlier. So instrumental was he in Kibaki’s political career that he was involved in the 2002 election strategy right from 1997 when the DP leader lost the elections to Mr Moi.
In the book, he reveals that DP did not have party headquarters until after the 1997 elections: “I subsequently called a meeting in the private dining room of Muthaiga Country Club and invited Kiraitu Murungi, Silas Ita, Njenga Karume and George Muhoho. Kibaki, the party Chairman, promised to attend, which he did.”
He writes that had the Mount Kenya region as a bloc fronted only one candidate and joined hands with Jaramogi, defeating Moi in the 1992 General Election would have been a walk in the park.
In one dramatic episode, he writes of how he broached to Matiba the idea of uniting with Kibaki towards this end.
“During one of those Hyde Park walks with Matiba, I decided to introduce to him the subject of Kibaki’s political candidature. ‘Is it possible for us to talk to Hon. Kibaki and see if he could join us in the fight against Moi?’ Matiba stopped abruptly on the steps. He looked me straight in the eye. ‘What have you said?’ he asked, rather astonished. ‘Who is Kibaki?’ The subject was not discussed again.
Dr Gikonyo also writes of Matiba’s triumphal return from London on May 2, 1992, and how he evaded an arrest or assassination attempt. There were fears that that could happen when he arrived at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport after his long treatment in London.
So serious were rumours of Matiba coming in harm’s way on his return to Nairobi that the British Government tried to stop him from coming back to Kenya.
“Recently released declassified documents in London reveal that these rumours of Hon Matiba’s elimination had reached the British Government and that Prime Minister John Major had tried to stop Hon Matiba from travelling back to Nairobi.”
The leader, however, insisted on coming back home, but “tricked the Kenya Government by booking different tickets”, some on British Airways that arrived in Kenya at 3 am and others on Kenya Airways that arrived at 8 am. He flew in the latter.
“We came to learn later that the airport was full of special police at 3am awaiting his arrival, only to find that he was not on the flight. By the time we landed aboard the Kenya Airways at 8am, the police cordon had been disbanded.”
Dr Gikonyo was born in Tetu, Nyeri, in 1950.
“Our home was upon that hill by the banks of Kagumo River in Tetu sub-county,” he writes, echoing those sentimental beginning lines from Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country whose hills are “grass-covered and rolling, and are lovely beyond any singing of it”.
His village, Ihithe, “a tranquil place with Gikuyu grasslands and evergreen vegetation of indigenous trees covering the hillside and river banks, forming a beautiful, lush tropical forest”, is also the birthplace of Prof Wangari Maathai, the world-renowned environmentalist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.
