Beth Mugo: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf talked me into running for presidency

Former nominated senator Beth Mugo says former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf persuaded her to run for the presidency in 2001.

Mugo told Citizen TV in a Sunday night interview that Sirleaf, a presidential aspirant at the time, came to Kenya to talk her into running for the country’s top seat as part of supporting women leaders in the continent’s leadership.

“She came to Kenya to get me to run for the presidency. I had said no, but she called me and came, took a friend and we met at the Windsor Hotel. She said to me, ‘Beth, we are thinking of which women in the region we can support for presidency’,” the 84-year-old veteran politician said.

“I protested, saying there are many other people in my family who can do that, but she said I should also be the woman among them. We argued and talked and eventually, I said I would try.”

However, Mugo, who served as minister in the late President Mwai Kibaki’s government, noted that she had prior to her talks with Sirleaf thought about running for the top seat.

“I had had that feeling before that and this was having someone confirm to me because they had seen my work in the region,” she said.

And asked whether being the niece of Kenya’s founding president, Jomo Kenyatta, she felt the need to prove herself, the former senator said, “Not really. But being close to my uncle, whom I am used to calling my father, and seeing him working in laying the foundation of the nation was quite an experience.”

She pointed out the nation’s founding father’s care for people and Kenya, as well as his dedication, as some of the attributes that drove her into politics.

“How he cared about the country and gave it all. I was very interested in what moved him and it made me interested in running for public office,” said Mugo.

Mugo served as Dagoretti MP from 2007 before being nominated as a senator for the Jubilee Party in 2013.

Her memoir, Early Bird, in which she details her journey in politics as well as her battle with cancer, was launched last week.