Raphael Tuju's wife secret affair that soon became the most public family scandal

Raphael Tuju and Wife Ruth Akinyi during happier times.

By Moses Michira

Nairobi, Kenya: Raphael Tuju says in court papers filed earlier this year that he married Ruth Akinyi on November 15, 1986 and they have three children together, all adults.

The first born is a son who has worked as a pilot while the twin daughters are in banking and fashion design industries, respectively.

December 2011

Esther Ogunda, wife of Tony Ogunda, confronts Tuju informing him that his wife Akinyi had snatched her husband and was even housing him in Ngong. Akinyi had supposedly asked Esther to go easy on the matter in exchange of material support, including rent for her house in Buru Buru.

Tuju convenes a meeting at his Karen home that is attended by the Ogundas and Akinyi to try to find amicable solution before the issue went public. According to Tuju, Ogunda and Akinyi agreed to end their illicit affair.

February 2012

Raphael Tuju launches his presidential bid and unveils Party of Action as the vehicle that would take him to State House, only to fall out of the race within months.

September 2012

Tuju and his wife separate. He retains his lavish home in Karen with his daughters while Akinyi and her son live in separate units in an integrated development containing apartment blocks and town houses in Upper Hill.

February 2013

Tuju moves to court seeking to formalise his separation and possibly divorce from his estranged wife of 27 years claiming she had become adulterous and violent.

Tuju claims in suit papers filed in court that his wife had been cheating on him with ‘a mannerless’ young man, who she had even brought into his matrimonial bed while he was away.

“Sometimes in the year 2011, I learnt that my wife was adulterous and had become very abusive and disrespectful to an extent of playing her adulterous life even at the knowledge of my children and workers. While I was away attending official and business duties, wherein I am mostly required to be out of the country or when I am away in politics, I learnt that my wife had a partner boyfriend who she used to commit adultery with,” Tuju pleaded in court documents.

Tuju also claimed that he has photographic evidence and telephone messages of the alleged affair. He claims the two have embarrassed him by conducting the affair in public.

May 2013

Security guards at Tuju’s home in Upper Hill snitch on his wife and inform the former minister that she had brought home the man, who was suspected of being her lover. Tuju arrives home in a short while with his bodyguards and finds Ogunda with his wife.

Tuju calls in the police who arrest Ogunda and is booked in at Kilimani Police Station with trespass. Ogunda is charged in a Nairobi court for trespass but Akinyi defends him saying that she had invited her lover over.

Akinyi bails Ogunda out after paying Sh500, but investigations continue.

July 2, 2013

Ogunda is found dead in Mr Tuju’s other property in Nairobi’s Upper Hill area.