It's unclear how the late Professor Abel Mugenda met his end. His family maintains that he died following a brief illness. That account is however disputed by several reports that assert he committed suicide.

Professor Abel Mutua was the former husband of Prof Olive Mugenda, the former Kenyatta University Vice-Chancellor. If the late Abel Mugenda is to be believed, the premature demise of their marriage was because “she was moving with small boys and coming home late,” a fact he maintained in court according to court documents in the Nairobian's possession.

In a statement to President Uhuru Kenyatta, the family claimed Abel had succumbed to a “short illness.”

In the affidavit filed at the Chief Magistrate’s court in Milimani, Nairobi in 2016, Abel painted the image of a long-suffering husband at the hands of his wife Olive whom he claimed was a person of unpredictable moods, ungovernable temper and violent in nature, making him live in fear in their matrimonial home.

“In 1986, the petitioner, Abel Gitau Mugenda, then a bachelor, was lawfully married to Olive Mwihaki Mugenda, then a spinster under the Marriage Act, which was solemnised in Nairobi until sometime in 2013, when the respondent deserted the matrimonial home and started moving with young men and coming home at late hours,” the affidavit read in part.

“Since the celebration of the said marriage, the respondent had on numerous occasions treated the petitioner with utmost cruelty, and to compound the said cruelty, the respondent deserted the matrimonial home and has been living in an adulterous life and committing adultery with various men and the marriage has irretrievably broken down,” stated the late Abel.

In his prayers to the court, Abel, asked that his 35-year old marriage be dissolved and his petition paid for by the wife.  He further stated that Olive, an alumnus of Alliance Girls High School, Nairobi Girls and Dry’s Farm Primary School in Timboroa, Baringo County, had generally been cruel, rebellious, unwilling to recognise him as her husband and shunned all efforts to persuade her to live a normal family life, besides refusing to take responsibilities of a wife and threatening him several times.

Abel added that he had “not been in any way been an accessory to, connived at, or condoned the said adultery, cruelty or desertion.”