The remains of Mobutu Sese Seko, one of Africa's most flamboyantly corrupt rulers, are to be repatriated to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, its president has announced.

Mobutu, who ruled the country for 31 years, was overthrown in 1997 and died in exile in Morocco a few months later.

President Joseph Kabila told the Congolese parliament that Mobutu's body would be returned to the country in agreement with his family.

It was Kabila's father, Laurent, whose rebel march on the capital, Kinshasa, forced Mobutu to flee in panic on an Antonov plane to Togo in west Africa, where witnesses reported seeing the first lady emerge from the jet in her nightgown.

Soon after, he went to Morocco, where he owned several homes, and reportedly sought permission to travel to France for treatment for prostate cancer – a request the French government refused. Instead the frail Mobutu was admitted to a military hospital in Rabat and died in September 1997 at the age of 66.

His eldest son, Nzanga Mobutu, contested the most recent election in the DRC but was never a serious contender for the presidency. He is an MP and now said to be an ally of Kabila.

Mobutu, then called Joseph Mobutu, seized power in a coup in 1965, deposing the government of Patrice Lumumba, the country's first prime minister after independence. Mobutu changed the country's name to Zaire in 1971. Known for his trademark leopard-skin hat, he plundered and looted his way to an estimated $5bn (£3.1bn), with homes in Switzerland and France. During the cold war, he enjoyed financial support from the US, whose then president, Ronald Reagan, called him "a voice of good sense and goodwill".

Critics remember him as a dictator who crushed dissent and presided over the collapse of rail, road and other infrastructure. But some Congolese are nostalgic, claiming that he deserves credit for holding together what is now sub-Saharan Africa's biggest country and facing a rebellion in the east.

Nzanga Mobutu has claimed: "People here think of President Mobutu as a man of peace who maintained peace and unity, and you know how important unity is for the Congolese."

Kabila, whose father was assassinated in 2001, said the remains of the former prime minister Moïse Tshombe, who became leader of the secessionist province of Katanga, would also be repatriated from Algeria, where he died in 1969.

In a rare parliamentary address, Kabila pledged to create a unity government. "This government will include members of the ruling majority as well as the opposition and civil society," he said. "Its priority mission will be the restoration of peace and the authority of the state, reconstruction, decentralisation, organisation of elections and the improvement of living conditions of the population."

Mobutu is not the first African leader to be lined up for posthumous rehabilitation. In 2010 François Bozizé, then president of the Central African Republic, declared that the self-appointed "emperor" Jean-Bédel Bokassa had been pardoned‚ although Bozizé was himself deposed earlier this year.