[5] In his last year at Mang'u, Kibaki briefly considered enlisting in the army, but this ambition was thwarted when Kenya's Chief colonial secretary, Walter Coutts, prohibited members of Kikuyu, Embu, and Meru communities from joining the military.

[18] Similarly, Kenneth Matiba also referred to him as "General Kiguoya" for refusing to resign the Kanu government and join the opposition after he was dropped as vice president in 1988.

[23] Kibaki joined third-placed Raila Odinga in accusing the president of rigging the poll, and both opposition leaders boycotted Moi's swearing in for his fifth term in office.

On 30 December 2002, still nursing injuries from the motor vehicle accident and in a wheel chair, Kibaki was sworn in as the third President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Kenya, in front of thousands of cheering supporters at the historic Uhuru Park within Nairobi City.

In January 2003, Kibaki introduced[failed verification] a free primary education initiative, which brought over 1 million children who would not have been able to afford school the chance to attend.

[40][41] In his tenure he was involved in numerous academic events including the famous Equity Group Foundation, Wings to Fly 2013 scholars commissioning.

The only members of the cabinet office to be spared a midterm exit were the Vice President and Minister of Home Affairs, Moody Awori, and the Attorney General whose position is constitutionally protected.

They reported that Kibaki, after agreeing to an informal Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to create the post of Prime Minister, reneged on this pact after being elected.

[50] Kalonzo Musyoka then broke away from Raila's ODM to mount his own fringe bid for the presidency, thus narrowing down the contest between the main candidates, Kibaki, the incumbent, and Odinga.

[52][53] Three days later, after a protracted count which saw presidential results in Kibaki's Central Kenya come in last, allegedly inflated, in a cloud of suspicion and rising tensions, amid vehement protests by Raila's ODM, overnight re-tallying of results and chaotic scenes, all beamed live on TV, at the national tallying center at the Kenyatta International Conference Center in Nairobi, riot police eventually sealed off the tallying Center ahead of the result announcement, evicted party agents, observers, and the media,[54] and moved the Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Samuel Kivuitu, to another room where Kivuitu went on to declare Kibaki the winner by 4,584,721 votes to Odinga's 4,352,993,[55] placing Kibaki ahead of Odinga by about 232,000 votes in the hotly contested election with Kalonzo Musyoka a distant third.

[56] One hour later, in a hastily convened dusk ceremony, Kibaki was sworn in at the grounds of State House, Nairobi for his second term, defiantly calling for the "verdict of the people" to be respected and for "healing and reconciliation" to begin.

Tension arose and led to protests by a huge number of Kenyans who felt that Kibaki had refused to respect the verdict of the people and was now forcibly remaining in office.

[54] It was reported that Kibaki, who had previously been perceived as an "old-school gentleman", had "revealed a steely side" when he swore himself in within an hour of being announced the victor of the highly contested election—one where the results were largely in question.

[64][70][71] The tribes that lost the election were upset at the prospect of five years without political power, and anti-Kikuyu sentiment swelled,[46][63] spawning the 2007–2008 Kenyan crisis, as violence broke out in several places in the country, started by the ODM supporters protesting the "stealing" of their "victory", and subsequently escalating as the targeted Kikuyus retaliated.

Such malpractices included widespread bribery, vote buying, intimidation, and ballot stuffing by both sides, as well as incompetence from the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK), which was shortly thereafter disbanded by the new Parliament.

[90] The CDF programme has facilitated the putting up of new water, health, and education facilities in all parts of the country including remote areas that were usually overlooked during funds allocation in national budgets.

[96][97] The People's Republic of China and Japan especially, the Asian Tigers such as Malaysia and Singapore, Brazil, the Middle East and to a lesser extent, South Africa, Libya, other African Countries, and even Iran, became increasingly important economic partners.

[98][99][100] President Kibaki was accused of ruling with a small group of his elderly peers, mainly from the educated side of the Kikuyu elite that emerged in the Jomo Kenyatta era, usually referred to as the "Kitchen Cabinet"[31] or the "Mount Kenya Mafia".

[104] Critics noted that President Kibaki failed to take advantage of the 2002 popular mandate for a complete break with the past and fix the politics largely mobilized along ethnic interests.

The quarrel over the MoU directly led to the break-up of the Narc government, after which Kibaki showed Odinga the door and invited the opposition to rule with him.

[109][110][111] Michela Wrong describes the situation thus:[33] "Whether expressed in the petty bribes the average Kenyan had to pay each week to fat-bellied policemen and local councillors, the jobs for the boys doled out by civil servants and politicians on strictly tribal lines, or the massive scams perpetrated by the country's ruling elite, corruption had become endemic.

In the corruption indices drawn up by the anti-graft organisation Transparency International, Kenya routinely trail[s] near the bottom ... viewed as only slightly less sleazy than Nigeria or Pakistan ..." The Daily Nation, in an article published on 4 March 2013 titled "End of a decade of highs and lows for Mwai Kibaki" summarised it thus: For a leader who was popularly swept into power in 2002 on an anti-corruption platform, Kibaki's tenure saw graft scandals where hundreds of millions of shillings were siphoned from public coffers.

Kibaki's National Rainbow Coalition – which took power from the authoritarian rule of Daniel arap Moi—was welcomed for its promises of change and economic growth, but soon showed that it was better suited to treading established paths.

The initial response to corruption was very solid ... but it became clear after a while that these scams reached all the way to the president himself," said Kenya's former anti-corruption chief John Githongo in Michela Wrong's book It's Our Turn to Eat.

Most notorious of a raft of graft scandals was the multi-billion shilling Anglo Leasing case, which emerged in 2004 and involved public cash being paid to a complicated web of foreign companies for a range of services—including naval ships and passports—that never materialised.

[113] Kibaki handed over the Kenyan presidency to his successor, Uhuru Kenyatta, on 9 April 2013 at a public inauguration ceremony held at Kenya's largest stadium.

[120] The matter of Kibaki's alleged mistress, and his wife's unusually dramatic public reactions therein, provided an embarrassing side-show during his presidency, with the Washington Post[121] terming the entire scandal as a "new Kenyan soap opera".

Ms. Wambui, the rather popular "other woman", who enjoyed the state trappings of a presidential spouse and became a powerful and wealthy business-woman during the Kibaki Presidency,[122] frequently drove Lucy into episodes of highly embarrassing very publicly displayed rage.

[124] In December 2014, Senator Bonny Khalwale stated on KTN's Jeff Koinange Live that President Kibaki had introduced Wambui as his wife.

The honors included the Last Post and The Long Reveille bugle cry, a 19 gun salute and The Missing Man formation fly past.