This archive report was first published on 9 November 2019.
For 38 years, the family of late Cabinet minister Mbiyu Koinange has been fighting over his estate estimated to be worth over Sh30 billion. The battle, which has seen them walk through the High Court, Court of Appeal, Supreme Court and back to the High Court since the patriarch’s death in 1981, is almost coming to an end.
Appearing before Justice Aggrey Muchelule on November 9, 2019, Koinange’s family from his four wives were all in agreement that the matter needs to come to a close to enable them move on with their lives. However, despite the many years in court corridors seeking to resolve one of the oldest family disputes, they still differed on how the properties should be shared.
Senior counsels Paul Muite and Ahmednassir Abdullahi representing Margaret Njeri and Eddah Wanjiru, Koinange’s third and fourth wives, respectively, submitted that the law recognised all the four wives and the estate should be divided equally among their families. “The distribution should be according to our culture which recognises that Koinange was a polygamous man with four houses. It is only fair if each house is given equal share and then the dependants from each house will agree on how to divide their share,” Muite said.
However, Koinange’s children from the first and second wives argued that their step-mothers had no children with their father and should get a smaller share. David Waiganjo, the late minister’s eldest son, proposed that the estate be divided according to Koinage’s children from each of the four houses. He supported his sister saying most of them have invested on the areas they occupied and it would be unfair to demolish their structures to re-distribute the estate.
