Did you know how Attorney General Paul Kihara Kariuki, TV host Jeff Koinange and President Uhuru Kenyatta are related?
Well, if you did not know let me break it down for you.
Definitely, you have heard about Kiambu's pre-independent era Senior Chief Koinange Wa Mbiyu.
Koinange had six wives and 34 children who are the backbone of a formidable lineage that is the Koinanges, as the Standard documents.
According to the daily, Mbiyu Koinange, who was Jomo Kenyatta’s brother-in-law and confidant, was the first Kenyan to attain university education after a Scottish teacher tipped his father about America having cheap, but good preparatory schools for miros. He died in 1981.
His brother Frederick Mbiyu Koinange was the first African Kenyan to open a car dealership in 1948, and our first indigenous petrol station, the Koinange Petrol Station in Kariokor in 1966, the year he died. He is the father of Citizen TV's anchor and author Jeff Koinange.
Their sister, Lilian Wairimu Koinange, who is the wife of Anglican Bishop Obadiah Kariuki, is the mother of Attorney General Paul Kihara Kariuki.
Other influential Koinanges include:
Charles Karuga Koinange: Chief of Kiambaa in 1951 and later PC in Central and Eastern provinces who died in 2004.
Joseph Karuga Koinange: Dean of students at the University of Nairobi and Principal of Kenyatta College in the three years to 1981.
John Karuga Koinange: Senator of Kiambaa from 1963 to 1966 in the first bicameral National Assembly.
#historynow