Widow of Nakuru tycoon Stephen Kung’u denies having ‘co-wife’

The widow of Nakuru hotelier and billionaire businessman Stephen Kung’u has dismissed claims that her late husband had another family, after a woman came out demanding a share of his estate estimated to be worth billions of shillings.

Ms Grace Nyambura, 71, told Lady Justice Abigail Mshila that a Ms Joyce Wanjiku who has filed a petition demanding a share of the late tycoon’s wealth together with her three children was not her co-wife.

The mother of six said she knew Ms Wanjiku as a worker at one of their businesses but insists that at no time did she (Wanjiku) have an affair with her husband.

Kung’u died on April 6 leaving behind a vast estate of businesses in Nakuru and Nairobi as well as cash deposits in numerous bank accounts.

Ms Nyambura said she married Kung’u in church and was awarded a marriage certificate on November 7, 1984. She added that the union existed until the time of her husband’s death from diabetes at a Nakuru private hospital.

In her five-page defence lodged in court, Ms Nyambura maintains that all the wealth they had was jointly acquired.

She says her major contribution to the estate saw them rise from poverty to the league of billionaires.

Her efforts, she says, are well documented in numerous registration and ownership certificates of various properties and companies in which she and Kung’u held a share each.

Among them are Kuka investments that manages his residential estates in Nairobi and Kunste Hotel Limited where she and the deceased hold a share each.

Tuesday, the widow pleaded for more time to document all properties and also engage with the “second family”, saying she was still in mourning hardly three months after her husband’s death.

And while lawyer Karanja Mbugua for Ms Wanjiku’s three children protested at the delay, saying Ms Nyambura and her children were plundering the estate, he said that he was hesitant to file the court case since he believed in dialogue.

The widow said on learning of the claim by the three siblings, she lodged a search at the Registrar of Births offices where she discovered that the claimants had altered their names to include her husband’s name.

For instance, she claims that Naomi Wambui first acquired a birth certificate when she was born on April 2, 1979 and that her mother’s name was the sole one entered in the first registration. But matters changed on August 24, 2010 when she sought a second registration that introduced Kung’u’s name.

No explanation has been given for Ms Wanjiku’s second child, Rahab Wamucii, who acquired a late birth registration certificate on November 8, 2011 although she was born on August 27, 1983.

The last child, Bilha Wanjiku Kung’u, was born eight months later on April 17, 1984.

Ms Nyambura termed the trio as strangers seeking a share of her vast wealth and urged the court to allow her and her children, Kansas Kagiri, Serah Wanjiku, Francis Ndegwa and David Ng’ang’a to peacefully mourn the loss of Kung’u.

She added that her husband was a God-fearing man who believed in the sanctity of a monogamous marriage that saw him make enormous contribution to spreading the gospel and growth of Shalom Mountain Ministries.

She says he bought prime parcels of land and buildings in Nakuru and Nairobi for use by the church with a firm rider that the properties be used for propagation of God’s work and that they were “part of his sacrifice in giving back to God and no one should interfere with them.”

The case will be mentioned in October.