Kosti Manibe Ngai, a former finance minister of South Sudan and veteran politician, has died in Nairobi after a long illness related to heart disease, his family said on Tuesday.
Manibe died at M.P. Shah Hospital in Nairobi after being admitted for treatment, his wife, Rev. Nediye Gone, told Radio Tamazuj.
“He underwent an operation and was admitted to the hospital on July 28 and passed away today. He had been in hospital for nearly three weeks,” she said.
Gone said funeral and burial arrangements had not yet been finalised. She said members of the community would meet to decide on the arrangements, while Manibe’s body remained at the hospital mortuary.
Manibe, who hailed from the Moru community in Western Equatoria State, was a veteran politician whose career spanned Sudan’s civil war, the establishment of the autonomous Government of Southern Sudan and the early years of South Sudan’s independence in 2011.
He began his public career in church administration before joining the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), the rebel movement that fought successive governments in Khartoum for greater autonomy and, ultimately, independence for southern Sudan.
By 2002, Manibe was serving as the SPLM/A’s commissioner for education.
He later moved into the administration of the semi-autonomous Government of Southern Sudan. In June 2010, President Salva Kiir appointed him minister of cabinet affairs, a position he held through the transition to independence in July 2011.
Shortly after independence, Manibe was appointed minister of finance and economic planning, taking over from David Deng Athorbei in August 2011. He held the post until July 2013.
In June 2013, Kiir suspended Manibe and then-Cabinet Affairs Minister Deng Alor Kuol and lifted their immunity over allegations related to the transfer of nearly $8 million to a private company. The allegations came amid growing political tensions within the ruling SPLM.
Manibe was among senior politicians detained after fighting erupted in Juba in December 2013. The government accused then-Vice President Riek Machar and others of attempting a coup, an allegation Machar denied.
Manibe was later released and became part of a group of senior SPLM figures known as the former detainees, or G10, who were detained following the 2013 conflict.
The group included prominent politicians such as Pagan Amum, Deng Alor and Manibe. It later became involved in negotiations that culminated in the 2018 peace agreement between Kiir’s government and opposition groups.
Manibe was initially associated with the former detainees’ political leadership under Deng Alor but later aligned himself with Pagan Amum’s political grouping. That group is now part of the United People’s Alliance (UPA), which is outside the 2018 peace agreement.
and then