Widows’ boss fights own sister’s husband – Weekly Citizen

The national chairperson of the Widows and Welfare Society of Kenya Hilda Orimba has accused a city lawyer of threatening her life following a burial dispute of her sister Margaret Kochola Atieno, who passed on in November last year.
Orimba, 64, who has headed the widow’s charity since 1993, says in court documents that her sister had before her death, disowned city lawyer Anyanga Ogutu with whom they had cohabited with at a house in Komarock in the Eastlands suburbs, before subjecting her to cruel mistreatment, saying he should not be allowed to bury her after her demise.
Margaret who was then admitted at Metropolitan Hospital in Buru Buru for several weeks was transferred to Texas Hospitals where she later succumbed to acute diabetes and high blood pressure accumulating a bill of over Sh400,000.

Hilda Orima, (right) at a past function. She is the founder of Rights of Widows and Orphans.

Orimba says in court papers in a case that was later ruled in her favour that her late sister had appointed her as next of kin and also appointed her as administrator for her assets and properties some of which they owned jointly.
Orimba dismisses Ogutu as an intruding crooked polygamist hell-bent on “illegally enriching himself from where he did not sow,” by purporting to have had marital rights over the late Margaret whom he never paid dowry for nor married through prescribed Christianity norms or customary law.
Orimba claims the lawyer had openly warned that he would not “allow her to enjoy the sister’s wealth” including the three bedroom house in Komarock and had moved to court to stop the burial but had failed. Instead, he hired goons to disrupt the funeral ceremony in Ndhiwa where food worth Sh400,000 was laid to waste as mourners were chased away with pangas.