A billionaire businessman from Juja in Kiambu County will be laid to rest on the border separating the homesteads of his two warring wives following a decision of a court.

Thika Chief Magistrate Stella Atambo ordered each of Christopher Mbote’s wives to cede a small part of their land separated by a wooded fence so that they share his burial site.

Mbote was among the wealthiest people in Juja and had built two separate homes for his two wives situated on a prime location measuring two and a half acres within Juja town.

However, when he died on January 16, his first wife Margaret Waithera reportedly initiated funeral preparations in her compound without involving Mbote’s second wife Anne Njeri.

It is then that Njeri rushed to court to halt the burial plans by Waithera that had been scheduled for Thursday citing her family’s exclusion in the elaborate funeral arrangements.

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In her decision, the magistrate warned the two women their strong opposing deportments could see their husband’s burial halted for months as his body stayed at the morgue.

The decision came after an effort by Kikuyu elders spearheaded by the Thika court to reconcile the two co-wives in a polygamous union failed.

Another idea mooted to by some family members to bury the wealthy businessman at his Mangu rural home in Gatundu North away from the Juja land also flopped miserably.

The magistrate’s direction saw a government surveyor sent to oversee the sharing of the grave site by hiving off a portion of land from both sides of the women’s homesteads.

The court also directed police officers from Juja Police Station to provide adequate security during Mbote’s funeral, which has been rescheduled to Friday February 3, 2023.

Mbote left behind property and businesses in Kiambu County and other towns worth billions of shillings and left behind 13 children; seven he had with Waithera and six with Njeri.

His body has been lying at the mortuary at the Kenyatta University Teaching Referral and Research Hospital in Kiambu County since the billionaire’s demise on January 16, 2023.