Mama Lucy was Mwai Kibaki's chaperone

By Nairobian Team | 7yrs ago | 3 min read

Just months after her husband became president in 2002, First Lady Lucy Kibaki reportedly shut down a bar inside State House where ministers and close allies of the President enjoyed drinks.

While shutting down the bar also severed the links some insiders had with State House, the hallowed precincts where the First Family stayed also became the grounds to square out old grudges with those who had wronged her.

Political analyst Mutahi Ngunyi recalls the time he was in State House and had to remain in the car to avoid bumping into the First Lady. “I had been warned that she was looking for me,” Mutahi told The Nairobian. Lucy had apparently told his handlers to “tell me when that Mutahi comes here... I want to beat him up!” State House security advised Ngunyi to stay in the car. In analysing her time as First Lady, Ngunyi says that many people did not know that Mama Lucy and President Kibaki were very close.

“Lucy was Kibaki’s chaperone and was in the kitchen cabinet. Other people were just details. Kibaki would complain about people and their jobs privately. She reacted to those who went against Kibaki’s will to show her displeasure in what we refer in political science as the ‘podium slip,” explains Ngunyi.

He adds: “A good example is when she dressed down the late Vice President Prof George Saitoti. At that time, Lucy could not differentiate Kibaki, the Presidency and herself. Lucy could see Kibaki’s good intentions, but some did not see and get them, and as such, she would react to them.”

Other public servants who tested Lucy’s ‘Mother Goose’ side include the late Prof George Saitoti and then Vice President, Kibaki’s Private Secretary and long-serving civil servant Matere Keriri. He was the keeper of the president’s diary and his duties often collided with the privacy of the First Family. Keriri’s problems started in the early days of Kibaki’s presidency in 2003 during a vacation at the Mombasa State House, where he had a tiff with the First Lady over the management of the president’s diary.

Another vice president, Kalonzo Musyoka, was not spared either. In March 2011, Lucy unleashed a scathing attack on Kalonzo over diplomatic cables attributed to him on Wikileaks, and which touched on State House and its residents.

Lucy charged that Kalonzo allowed his “selfish interests” to drive his unsavoury remarks aimed at tainting the integrity of President Kibaki and his family. Lucy termed Kalonzo’s comments as “barefoot falsehood, innuendos, unkind and against African values.”

Ngunyi wraps up thus: “In a nutshell, Lucy was the custodian of Kibaki’s consciousness and she reacted against those who went against that consciousness.”

Social and political commentator Barrack Muluka concurs with Ngunyi and chips in that Mama Lucy “was the sounding board for President Kibaki for those matters which had been discussed privately, but were frustrating, so she would actually end up saying them in public.”