One day, Kiraitu Murungi, then Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs, and President Mwai Kibaki were driving around and some boys showed up in the road and asked them to give them some little cash.
Kiraitu dipped his hand in his pocket and before he could extract the money, Kibaki asked him:
'Bwana Waziri, what are you trying to do?'
Embarrassed, he answered that he was getting some 'chai' for the young men by the roadside.
Kibaki then asked:
'Why should these people be given money?
What have they done? Don't they have farms to till or cows to feed?
Who invited them to come and stare at our motorcade?
Surely, must we just be paying people for standing by the roadside?'
Upon ascending to power, Kibaki never participated in any harambee because he believed that it was better to grow the economy than to dish hand-outs.
When a delegation from Nyeri went to him to ask for favours in terms of funding after the 2002 polls, the president told them, without blinking an eyelid, that banks in Kenya have things called loans which one could apply for and that State House was not licensed by Central Bank to offer credit.