Charity Ngilu Biography, Age, Family, Career, Controversy and More

Charity Kaluki Ngilu is a Kenyan politician and the current governor for Kitui County. She is one of the two remaining female governors in Kenya.

Age

She was born on 28^th January 1952 in Mbooni, Makueni County.

Family

Charity was the ninth born in a family of thirteen children. Ngilu’s family is from the Kamba tribe. Her father was a staunch Christian evangelist.

Education

She is a proud alumnus of one of the best schools in the country, Alliance Girls High School. Unfortunately, she did not make it to university. Not deterred by this, she did a secretarial course at St. Paul’s University in Nairobi. She also studied at the Kenya Institute of Administration.

Career

Having done a secretarial course, she became at the Kenya Central Bank. She later quit the job and became the administration manager at the Manhattan Corporation. Later on, joined the family business by opening a bakery and a restaurant. She also founded a company, Ani Plastics Limited. Her debut into the political career began in in 1992 when free elections had just been initiated. She competed for a legislature position at Kitui Central and won becoming one of Kenya’s first five women at the legislature using the Democratic ticket.

Her fame was really high in 1997 when she openly challenged Moi in his run for presidency. She received numerous attacks by KANU supporters and lost to Moi coming in fifth. In 2002, she supported Mwai Kibaki and was appointed as Minister for health after Kibaki won. Her party NARC, greatly supported Mwai and during her reign as minister, she was greatly ridiculed for several laws she wanted put in place. In 2007 elections, however, she supported ODM and NARC was in coalition with the party, she was then re-elected into office as an MP for the same constituency.

She was appointed the minister for water and irrigation. In 2013, she announced that she was supporting ODM but pulled out. Charity Ngilu also ran for senator the same year but lost to David Musila. In 2017, she was among the two first women to run for presidency but lost the election. Kaluki was then later appointed as the Cabinet secretary for Land, Housing and Urban Development but resigned due to allegations of corruption. She ran for governor of Kitui County and won in 2017. She was, however, facing a possible impeachment in 2020. Currently, she is a part of  Communist Party of Kenya (CPK).

Marriage

She was married to Michael Mwendwa in the early 1980s but he passed away on 1^st July 2006. Charity is a proud mother of three children who are all successful.

Controversy

She was named among the top Kenyan officials by the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) that were linked to corruption and other economic crimes. In 2020, the Kitui MCAs proposed a motion for her impeachment for defending Anne Waiguru.