Mwihia was a quantity surveyor and construction professional who had been active in Gatundu politics for years before the 1997 election. According to a 2013 profile based on his account, he had campaigned for politicians in Gatundu from 1979 and first attempted to enter Parliament in 1988.
The 1988 contest took place under the controversial mlolongo queue-voting system introduced during the one-party era. Mwihia said he participated in the nomination contest but was eliminated before the secret-ballot stage after his rival Zachariah Gakunju was declared to have secured the required threshold.
These are accounts attributed to Mwihia in his later interview, rather than independently verified findings.
In 1992, he said KANU tried to persuade him to contest the seat, but he declined because he had already aligned himself with the opposition.
He also claimed that the government had withheld about Sh7 million owed to him for consultancy work, which he believed affected his ability to finance his political campaign. That claim was his own account in the later interview.
The dramatic 1997 election
The 1997 election was particularly significant because Gatundu had been divided into Gatundu North and Gatundu South, creating a new political contest in an area historically associated with Jomo Kenyatta.
Uhuru Kenyatta, Jomo Kenyatta's son, entered the race for Gatundu South on a KANU ticket, while Mwihia ran on the Social Democratic Party (SDP) ticket.
Uhuru was widely viewed as a major contender because of the Kenyatta family's political influence and the constituency's history. Kenya Yearbook records that the opposition environment in Central Kenya, together with resentment toward the KANU government, became an important backdrop to the contest.
The most famous part of the story concerns an alleged staged disappearance shortly before voting day.
According to accounts published by Kenyans.co.ke and later echoed in other Kenyan media, Mwihia's team reportedly created a story that he had been killed or abducted.
A relative allegedly contacted the Daily Nation on December 24, 1997, saying Mwihia was missing.
A vehicle resembling his was then reportedly found in the Thiririka River, with blood traces inside. The reports say the incident created anger and fears that he had been eliminated for challenging the powerful Kenyatta family.
Mwihia later emerged on election day and, according to these accounts, told supporters that he had been detained at State House.
By then, many voters had already cast ballots. Kenyans.co.ke reported that he eventually secured approximately 22,000 votes against Uhuru's 10,000.
Mwihia himself later acknowledged that he had deliberately used a political trick to disrupt Uhuru's campaign.
In an interview reported by The Standard in 2017, he was described as admitting that he had managed to make Uhuru slow down his campaign and consequently suffered a heavy defeat.
His relationship with the Kenyatta political family
Mwihia later said his victory was not purely the result of the alleged disappearance story.
He claimed that he had spent years building political networks in Gatundu and that Ngengi Muigai, another prominent local politician and a relative of Uhuru, eventually supported him after realizing Uhuru was losing ground. Mwihia said this helped combine his own support base with Ngengi's followers.
He also recalled that people claiming to represent former President Daniel arap Moi approached him and attempted to persuade him to step aside for Uhuru. Mwihia said he refused and challenged Moi to approach him personally.
What happened in 2002?
Mwihia served as Gatundu South MP from 1997 to 2002. He contested the seat again in the 2002 election, but this time faced a much stronger Uhuru Kenyatta after Moi openly backed Uhuru.
Mwihia later said Moi visited Gatundu in November 2002 and appealed to residents to support Uhuru as part of restoring the political legacy associated with Jomo Kenyatta.
Uhuru won the seat in 2002 by a huge margin. An EU Election Observation Mission report recorded Uhuru with 33,052 votes, or 91.57%, while Moses Ng'ang'a Muhia received 2,239 votes, or 6.20%, confirming the dramatic reversal from 1997.
Life after Parliament
Mwihia returned to the construction sector. A 2013 profile said he had spent six years at the Ministry of Public Works, taught quantity surveying and building economics at the University of Nairobi for eight years, and later established Continental Quantity Surveyors.
He subsequently became active in the Kenya Federation of Master Builders, where he served as national chairman, and was involved in lobbying for legislation that eventually led to the establishment of the National Construction Authority.
Why his 1997 story remains notable
Mwihia's importance in Kenyan political history is largely tied to the extraordinary circumstances of the 1997 Gatundu South election.
He defeated the son of Kenya's founding president in a constituency closely identified with the Kenyatta family, only to lose the same seat to Uhuru five years later by an overwhelming margin.
The alleged fake-death episode is widely repeated in Kenyan political histories, but it is important to distinguish Mwihia's own later account and media reports from independently documented election records.
The official historical record firmly establishes the result: Moses Ng’ang’a Mwihia won Gatundu South in 1997, while Uhuru Kenyatta won it in 2002.