How police chief King'ori faced tall order as First Lady stormed Nation Centre

First Lady Lucy Kibaki and King'ori Mwangi at the Daily Nation newsroom, May 2, 2005. [File, Standard]

During his lifetime and career, former Assistant Inspector General of Kenya Police Zachary King’ori Mwangi fought many battles. And in death, he would easily be eulogised as a gallant soldier.

In the dead of night on May 2, 2005, the first-born son of Nairobi police chief King’ori lay on his hospital bed and on life support – while clutching on the remaining straws of his life. 

Top oncologists at The Nairobi Hospital had ruled out any remote chances for the survival of the high school boy. 

However, King’ori and his family prayed and waited for a miracle to happen. They refused to give up on their son. They rejected the idea of planning his burial. 

A team of oncologists had diagnosed the boy with a cancerous tumour in his head, which was in the critical Stage 4 level. 

As the boy swung between life and death, it was only his father, mother and a handful of relatives who clung to that faint hope that he would rise from the beckoning dark chambers of death. 

Although the turmoil was threatening to blow up King’ori on that night, he found himself torn between being on his son’s deathbed and discharging his sensitive role as a policeman. 

Being the Nairobi Provincial Police Officer (PPO), the gigantic task of managing crime and security in the capital city as well as the protection of President Mwai Kibaki and his family, including State House, Nairobi, rested in his hands. 

Despite being heavily weighed down by thoughts of a dying son, one false move would cost him his job and ruin his chequered police career for good. 

Hospital bill

And King’ori badly needed this job for his salary and police connections assured him of raising the staggering hospital bill needed for medication and treatment to save his son from the jaws of death.   

As the policeman’s son lay on his hospital bed waiting for his fate, First Lady Lucy Kibaki stormed the newsroom of Daily Nation at Nation Centre’s third floor in the company of six bodyguards and a terrified King’ori. That was around 11pm. 

Being his area of security jurisdiction, King’ori had been notified by Mrs Kibaki’s aides of the abrupt mission and he had to leave his son in hospital and dash to attend State matters.  

The First Lady had come to protest against the media for highlighting a story of how she had dramatically disrupted a farewell party at the Nairobi home of outgoing World Bank Country Director Makhtar Diop, demanding he turn down loud music. 

The two families were neighbours at the posh Muthaiga up-market estate, Diop residing in Kibaki’s rented house. 

Mrs Kibaki had burst into Diop’s compound on the night of April 29, 2005, and the next issue of the Sunday Nation exclusively broke the juicy story. 

 First Lady Lucy Kibaki stormed the Daily Nation newsroom in the company of six bodyguards. [File, Standard]

The First Lady would later storm Muthaiga Police Station demanding the arrest of a diplomat and his guests for disturbing her peace. 

Stung by the Sunday Nation scoop, The Standard beat NMG with the follow-up drama at the police station. 

At 10.30pm on May 2, 2005, the early editions of The Standard rolled out to the press and hit the streets. 

It had a splash exclusive story of how the president’s wife had earlier stormed Muthaiga Police Station. 

The story disclosed she was wearing a night-dress. This didn’t go down well with Mrs Kibaki.   

It appeared that her aides alerted her about the story of the Muthaiga Police Station incident being splashed in the fresh copies of The Standard. 

Ironically, she landed at the Nation Centre at around 11pm, instead of going to vent her anger in the newsroom of The Standard. 

A furious Mrs Kibaki gave a five-hour dressing down to the editors and journalists. 

She was demanding the arrest of the journalist and editor who filed the story on her rage at the Muthaiga Police Station. 

I watched in shock as the First Lady took a few quick steps to my workstation and slapped a KTN cameraman Clifford Derrick, who was busy filming her tirade. 

“I’m here to protest and I’m not leaving until I find the reporter who has been writing all these lies,” Mrs Kibaki said in the televised recording of her screed. 

In her rage, she seemed to have picked the wrong newspaper, as it was not Daily Nation, but its rival The Standard, which had published the article. She was wav­ing a copy of The Standard. 

At one time, Mrs Kibaki turned to King’ori and sarcastically asked him if he was sleepy. “You can leave if you wish!” the furious wife of the President barked at King’ori. 

“No Madam!” the policeman responded as he saluted. It seemed Mrs Kibaki had spotted King’ori trying to fight off sleep and struggling to remain awake and alert. It was now around 2am. 

 How I wished she had known the big battle that King’ori was fighting inside himself watching helplessly as his son wasted away under powerful doses of the chemotherapy treatment. 

The president’s wife ended her drama at around 5am and left in a huff. 

 First Lady Lucy Kibaki displays a copy of 'The Standard' when she stormed the Daily Nation. [AFP]

I am sure that was a huge sigh of relief for the weary King’ori as he could again focus his mind on his dying son. 

The boy had been diagnosed with the deadly disease earlier in the year and he had been undergoing chemotherapy treatment at The Nairobi Hospital. 

For months, King’ori had been shuttling between the office and The Nairobi Hospital. 

It was King’ori who had the bigger role of looking after the son in hospital since his wife, Mercy Wangiri King’ori, was a teacher at Nyeri National Polytechnic, some 250km from Nairobi. King’ori’s office was less than a kilometre from the hospital.  

The staggering hospital bills had already drained King’ori’s bank accounts and pockets and at one time he had to turn to his relatives, friends and colleagues to chip in through fundraising. 

I attended the fundraising as his friend. Due to his generosity and knowing how to connect with people of all cadres, the well-attended fundraiser raised millions within a matter of minutes. 

The funds were enough to send King’ori’s son to a specialised hospital in Britain. However, when the frail boy was put on a plane to London, his condition worsened and the flight had to turn back shortly after leaving Kenyan airspace. 

A waiting ambulance rushed the patient to The Nairobi Hospital. He had been in the Intensive Care Unit up to the time the First Lady was venting her fury at the Nation Centre. 

I visited the boy twice in hospital and chemo doses had taken a heavy toll on him. The drugs had stripped him of his hair and he spoke with difficulties. It was my first encounter with a cancer patient being ravaged by chemo doses. 

The boy sadly lost the battle for his life days later. At the burial in Nyeri, I couldn’t hold back tears when I saw King’ori weeping bitterly at the graveside. 

“I have done what was humanly possible to save the life of my son in vain,” the policeman told me when I caught up with him after the grave had been filled up and flowers placed on a load of fresh soil. 

As our friendship blossomed, King’ori escaped an assassination bid by a whisker when gunmen sprayed him with bullets as he drove into his Nairobi home one night. 

He survived by the skin of his teeth as only his fingers were grazed by the whizzing bullets. He was then serving as a police spokesman based a heartbeat away from the office of the Commissioner of Police, Maj Gen Hussein Ali. 

When I visited him in hospital and at his home after he was discharged, he had his suspicions about who wanted him dead. 

Former police boss King'ori Mwangi. [File, Standard]

King’ori never hid his opposition to plans that were underway to merge the Kenya Police with the Administration Police. 

Loyal friend

King’ori never betrayed his friends. When he learnt of a plot to bring me down at the Nation Media Group, hatched by a top corporate chief and a police boss after I had refused to be part of a cover-up on police wanton gangland executions of suspected criminals and the outlawed Mungiki gangs, King’ori called me to his Nairobi Area office and alerted me of the scheme. 

Having earned a diploma in journalism at the University of Nairobi’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication after joining the police, King’ori understood the hazards of the profession. 

When he learnt I had been diagnosed with cancer and put on chemotherapy treatment in 2009, he visited me at home and at the MP Shah Hospital. He also sent cash to boost my treatment. 

King’ori joined the Kenya Police and went for training at the Kiganjo Police Training College armed with a first-class honours degree. 

A hard-working policeman with natural leadership skills and intelligence to match, King’ori clawed his way up the ranks very fast. 

An exceptionally brilliant man, King’ori broke records in the police, which mainly consisted of primary and secondary school graduates, by taking only nine years to rise from a civilian to a gazetted officer (Senior Superintendent). 

King’ori was an effective master in scheming and networking in high offices. He also operated like a lone star on a dark night. 

At 37, he was PPO in Nairobi. Traditionally, those positions – which were scrapped by the 2010 Constitution – were usually reserved for police officers in their 50s or on the verge of retirement. 

King’ori holds the record of being one of the youngest-ever PPOs in the service. He was rated amongst the best when it comes to strategy and operations. 

His ambitions

A stickler for rules, King’ori harboured ambitions of being either the Commissioner of Police, which was also scrapped by the new Constitution or the Inspector General of Police or the Director of Criminal Investigations (DCI). 

King’ori spoke his mind and he made his position known no matter how others felt. 

In a twist of fate, King’ori’s bright star in the police service started dimming when he was sent to Mombasa as the provincial police boss in the mid-2000s.  

On November 14, 2012, he faced a vetting panel tasked to pick Kenya’s first deputy Inspector General under the 2010 Constitution. And his stint at the Coast came to haunt him. 

Easily the best among the nine candidates who had been shortlisted for the job, King’ori found himself on the spot being forced to fight off corruption allegations tabled before the commission. 

Former police boss King'ori Mwangi. [File, Standard]

“I have worked in Mombasa and I know there are two kinds of politics there. Kuna siasa ya ushoga na siasa za unga (gay politics and drugs). I was not in any of them,” King’ori curtly told the commissioners interviewing him for the job. 

Then one of the commissioners asked him about a block of the apartment he allegedly owned and a Sh6.5 billion drug heist. 

Living up to his billing of being a non-nonsense policeman, King’ori sent the commissioners bursting with laughter when he briskly retorted: “About the flat in Zimmerman, I don’t even have a relative there. If you think you are my tenant in Zimmerman, then don’t pay rent.” 

With that, King’ori’s dreams of ever rising to the helm of the National Police Service came to a grinding halt. But he was happy he had set the records straight. 

His highest rank was Assistant Inspector General of Kenya Police. His last posting was a secondment at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He retired in 2020. 

King’ori kept his life private. His wife died in 2019 after a battle with cancer. 

During the burial ceremony on February 9, 2019, held at Ndugamano Primary School in Tetu, Nyeri County, hordes of top cops and the political class attended to give him moral support. 

King’ori eulogised his wife as a supportive partner, his best friend and advisor since their first meeting in 1985. 

He told the mourners that his wife had agreed to marry him without a ring since he could not afford one immediately. She waited for three years before he was able to afford one. 

As King’ori’s family prepares to bury their loved one, a great man has fallen. And I have lost a dear friend of close to 30 years. 

[Stephen Muiruri is a former Editor (Crime and Security) at the Nation Media Group and former editorial consultant of The DCI magazine]