Reluctant don who rose to become University of Nairobi vice chancellor

NEW VC MBITHI

NAIROBI: Rays of light dance on the man in print short-sleeved shirt, contrasting his black pants that appear shaded in the afternoon sun. He is seated outside a manicured lawn teeming with rose flowers, a couple of books at his elbow.

He rises and extends a firm handshake and quickly switches to another seat at the request of the assignment photographer.

“I am very flexible,” says Prof Mbithi, who takes charge at the University of Nairobi on as Vice Chancellor Tuesday. “But that does not mean changing the goal.”

His goal for the day is to give his first Press interview and we are seated outside his imposing maisonette in Kabete, on the fringes of Nairobi.

“This is home,” Mbithi says, in reference to the locality, not the home, where together with his wife Adelaide, a senior administrator at the University of Nairobi, they have raised their four daughters: Yvonne, a medical doctor, Victoria, a practising lawyer and Florence, an engineer. The last born, Lilian, recently graduated from the Kenya School of Law while their mother was also conferred with a doctorate in Business Administration at the University of Nairobi.

The family boasts of more than ten degrees, no doubt one of the highest concentrations of qualifications under one roof.

“My children lived here while they attended university,” says Mbithi.

Just about everything about the professional life of the veterinary surgeon starts and ends in Kabete.

Pointing towards the road, the vice chancellor says: “Just about ten metres from the road is the house I first occupied when I was appointed a tutorial fellow at the university in 1983. I was living there when I got married.”

The first meeting with his wife, just as happened in other crucial milestones in his life, was the result of what he calls the “interplay of quite a number of things.”

He recalls that about 31 years ago, he had gone to visit his eldest sister, a Catholic nun, at J J McCarthy convent on Riverside Drive in Nairobi. Around the same time, Adelaide had gone to visit an old classmate who had joined the convent.

“When you are in the convent and the only man, the duty of escorting a woman falls on you,” Mbithi chuckles.

So it was that walk with Adelaide from the convent, whom he had met earlier at a school in Ukambani, that turned into their walk of life. From a shrine housing women who had renounced marriage for religion, he would meet his life companion.

What’s the secret of a successful marriage? “Trust and letting the other person be,” Adelaide says.

On his success in public administration and academia, Mbithi admits he was initially reluctant to join the academia; with the soul ambition being veterinary practice.

“Those days, jobs were available. One was given in a Land Rover and had a district to serve and they became their own bosses. But my seniors, Prof Kiptoon (then the departmental chair) and Prof Maloy (then college principal) wanted me to return and teach clinicals. They won and I came here (to Kabete). I can tell you they had to send somebody to Kangundo to bring the letter of appointment,” Mbithi laughs.

The vice chancellor was reluctant to take up scholarship and was equally hesitant to take up departmental chairmanship when he was asked to step in after the holder of the office was hospitalised, before he succumbed after ten months.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to be chairman, or that I didn’t have what it takes to be one. There were others who wanted to be chairmen and who had been there longer,” Mbithi explains. And after serving as chairman for eight years, he was urged to contest for the dean’s post.

“What I like about university deanship is that it’s elective. It’s not true that Kenyans are overwhelmingly tribal... I’m the living testimony that Kenyans are not tribal.”

On the “tribal” student bodies at the university, Mbithi says these are instigated by politicians but “when it comes to the nitty-gritty of things, students vote differently.”

Mbithi’s ascent to college principal coincided with student unrest at Kabete campus, which he says he was able to quell and assert firm control by getting students to be part of the solution.

The man whose daily routine starts at 6.30am and sometimes staggers on to midnight, says his work ethics was fortified during his sojourn in Canada, where he took his second degree at the University of Saskatchewan in Veterinary Surgery, more so after witnessing old faculty who were fully dedicated to their students, meeting as early as 6am for a journal club meeting.

He says he intends to take his work as vice chancellor with equal zeal. “I cannot afford to stumble because if I did, I would disappoint many,” Mbithi says, adding that he is secure in the knowledge that “all my teachers are still at the University of Nairobi” and available for consultation.

For now, he is preparing to move from the family house that he has occupied for the past 14 years to the official vice chancellor’s residence in Kileleshwa. He reveals that the house has not been occupied for the last 13 years, so he will have to await completion of renovation.

“It’s not about comfort,” he says about his decision to move. “It’s about service.”

Reading through the rich resume of the 58-year-old don, there is no doubt about his service to the institution. His last assignment was Deputy Vice Chancellor (Administration and Finance), a position he has held since 2005 and is credited with major projects that transformed the fortunes of the institution and put it on the road to financial prosperity.

For instance, the university presently enjoys a surplus of Sh800 million in its coffers, which is a complete turnaround since it had a deficit of Sh2 billion when Mbithi took charge.

Within the same period, its fixed asset value grew exponentially to Sh95 billion from Sh11 billion in 2005. Similarly, the institution’s research and endowment portfolio has grown under Mbithi’s watch from Sh500 million to Sh2.4 billion.