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The sons of an ailing and retired Kenya Defense Forces commander are embroiled in a legal tussle over his multi-million shilling estate with their step-mother, previously the family’s house help.
Major-General (Rtd) Duncan Kireri Wachira, the former commander of the Kenya Air Force for five years till 1994, has helplessly been following the unending wrangles- pitting his two sons from his first marriage and his second wife, Margret Wakonyo - from his hospital bed.
The 77-year-old divorced his first wife, Ann Wanjiru, a former teacher at Pangani Girls School who left for the United States in 1997, leaving the retired soldier in the company of Wakonyo, the house help whose bride price he paid before their official wedding in church.
Now his sons, Michael Wanjohi, a banker and Edward Thiong’o, an engineer complain their father has cut them off from his life and have petitioned the High Court in Nairobi to grant them custody of him away from Wakonyo with whom he has been living at his 100 acre Nyahururu farm in Ol Joro Orok, Nyandarua County.
They have lived there with their two children (one from her previous relationship) for the last 10 years.
Besides custody of their father, the sons also contend that Wakonyo does not deserve a single cent from Maj-Gen Wachira’s estate from which they collect Sh1.3 million monthly income whose share Wakonyo is demanding as the second wife.
Wakonyo has sought court orders to be included as a beneficiary and use the proceeds to pay for medical bills and general maintenance for her husband, besides her own upkeep and that of her children.
The sons told the High Court that the properties in question, a dairy farm in Limuru, three residential houses in Nairobi and a commercial building in Ongata Rongai (including the family residence in Kilimani), were acquired by their father with their mother, according to the petition filed through lawyer, Kimani Kiarie on October 17, 2016. But the sons argue that they’re the only ones- together with their last born sister Sylvia Muthoni- who are the entitled beneficiaries.
Without specifications, Wanjohi in his affidavit also claims that their father transferred some properties to Wakonyo whom the family only knew as a house help.
But the Family Division of the High Court allowed Wakonyo to remain as her husband’s guardian. In her affidavits, she says she first meet the old man in 2000 when “One day he held my hand and openly declared that he was lonely and said he admired me. He requested me if we could become friend and that’s how our relationship started,” Wakonyo recounts in one of her witness statement by her lawyer, Gathara Mahinda.
Maj-Gen Wachira trusted Wakonyo with all the properties and he even paid her driving lessons, besides paying her bride price at her family’s Kinamba area of Nyahururu in 2010.
In attendance were the soldier’s paternal uncles the late Pastor Mugothi and Gathigi Wanjohi also deceased and the former’s wife the late Muthoni Mugothi. Others were Wachira’s elder sister, Lydia Wangechi and his cousin, Dr David Muthoga- who says in his affidavit that he allowed his cousin to remarry as he had done after a bout of loneliness following his wife’s relocation to the US.
A church wedding followed in 2015, the year Maj-Gen Wachira officially dissolved his marriage after filing a divorce at the Senior Principal Magistrate’s court in Nyahururu.
The year he wedded in church, was the time the Maj-Gen Wachira used a court order to evict his two children, Thiong’o and Sylvia from his Kilimani home.
The soldier had been advised by his doctor to relocate from cold Nyahururu to a warmer place in 2015 and he chose Nairobi, but Thiong’o declined to surrender the house.
Thiong’o filed a suit at the Milimani Commercial Court and in his affidavit describes his father as ‘a narcissist and habitual liar of unsound mind and not competent to swear an affidavit’. He further described him as an ‘abusive, armed and violent psychopath who suffers from Machiavellianism’.
Thiong’o lost the case forcing him and the sister to move out, but have been allowed visitation rights twice a week.
The case to determine whether they will be granted custody over their father will be heard before Judge Roselyn Ougo on March 22.
