Matere Keriri: The genesis of my fights with Lucy Kibaki

When did the bad blood between you and former First Lady Lucy Kibaki start? 

It is good to give context so people can understand. Due to Kibaki’s accident just before the elections in 2002, he was unwell for months and became worse after becoming President. He had broken his leg and shoulder. It was terrible. Even after being discharged from hospital in London he was still very sick and at the airport he couldn’t come down the aircraft; he came down by a special elevator. 

I was in that elevator and never left his side, not even for a day. We went to State House but he lived in his Muthaiga home, from where doctors treated him. Among the specialists taking care of him were Dr Dan Gikonyo, Dr Frank Njenga and Dr Oluoch Olunya.

One day he became very sick again and in shock I asked Dr Gikonyo what we would do. Most of us did not want to go back to London. Dr Gikonyo told me we could organise to treat the President right here at home if we could get everything we needed, including doctors from other parts of the world. We did it. 

The bad blood with the First Lady, Lucy, started when I insisted that the President should be treated at Nairobi Hospital while she wanted him to be attended to at home. She never forgave me for that. I told her the government would not agree with that and we moved the President to the hospital. My interactions with the First Lady never recovered after that. When the President felt better — but was not fully recovered —  I insisted on him being treated at State House. I had to stay with him at State House until he recovered. Lucy was not amused.

Did she slap you, as has been widely reported?

She never slapped me. She would insult me here and there but never slapped me. And even on the much-publicised airport incident in 2004, it is not her who refused to shake my hand.

Many people had lined up to receive the President. Norman Nyaga, then the Kamukunji MP, was standing next to me.  Since we had already disagreed with her in Mombasa, when I saw her approaching, I knew there was going to be an incident and so it was my duty to prevent it.  

By the way, we had disagreed so much that we couldn’t even use the same aircraft from Mombasa. I quickly stepped behind Nyaga to let her pass, so it is me who avoided her and not the other way round. Trust me, there would have been worse drama had I stayed there. 

How much more did you endure in her hands at State House?

I have seen worse things that I can’t go into. We swear to keep State secrets so I cannot reveal what happened in the Kibaki State House.

Some say she eventually kicked you out of State House though.

Let me just say this: When I decided to leave Kibaki gave me two weeks to report back but I ran away from Kenya. I had to leave. Muthaura knew where I was and tried persuading me to come back but I said I would never go back to that State House. They said they would move my office to Harambee House and I agreed. At Harambee House I was given the Private Secretary to the President role, but this time without the State House Comptroller functions. I was still the President’s adviser, though.

Then there was again the hullabaloo with the First Lady and I requested the President let me leave the place. I told him that I didn’t want the First Lady to keep bothering him over me yet he could effectively run the government without me. I was then taken to the Energy Regulatory Authority and he would call me every now and then and I would tell him I couldn’t go to State House. We usually met at Harambee House.

In 2007 I went to the President and told him I wanted to retire. He asked me: “You are the accounting officer for the Ministry of Finance, you are the Financial Secretary, why would you let this go?” I  told him to just allow me to retire from public service and not appoint me into any position again, including in State companies, parastatals and so on. He stopped and said: “Okay, shauri yako.” I then went and became the chief advisor of group that developed the Lake Turkana wind power project, the biggest wind power farm in Africa and the second in the world.

How different was the Deep State grouping of the Kibaki era compared to the one in the Uhuru administration?

These things have just come up the other day during Uhuru’s government. Is it because the Deep State was going to deal with someone and some group? There is the inner Cabinet, inner core of the government and the Deep State, and then there is “the system”, which has the same meaning as “regime”. The Deep State is made up of the people who decide the most complicated things of the State. It is not formal.  

The inner Cabinet, on the other hand, is made of people who the President is prone to asking advice from. It is the inner part of the government. But then again, there is a box in State House that is only opened by two people; the President and the Director of Intelligence. The President knows everything and is expected to exhibit the highest degree of humility and tolerance. 

For how long have you known Kibaki?

I have known Kibaki since the 1950s. Being his private secretary and State House comptroller happened just the other day. He was my lecturer at Makerere University in Uganda, where he taught me economics. 

He noticed me in class as I was an inquisitive student who asked him a lot of questions and that is how he “discovered” me. We then became colleagues. He has never treated me like his junior, even when he became a minister and I was the assistant secretary. 

He always treated me as a friend and we worked together. He would disagree with me on several things, though. In most occasions he would say“Oh John, that’s farfetched” in his signature style of talking. 

At what point did he develop the ambition to be President?

In 1963 I mentioned to him that he’d one day become president and he dismissed me. I remember him saying” “Oh John, where do you get such wild ideas from? Let’s have a drink and leave this place.” He did not want to entertain the thought then. He just wanted to work in any station or position that could change the fortunes of Kenyans. I don’t know when he decided to go for it, but it must after Raila endorsed him in 2002.

How does he handle his juniors when he feels they have underperformed? 

He doesn’t like ordering people around. He is happy with you as long as you do the right thing. He is result-oriented. And if you did something wrong he would call you a fool. There is a day I didn’t deliver as he expected, his response was: “John, I’d hate myself if I were you.” But he never kept a grudge. 

Have you seen Mzee lately?

Yes. He is alright, but you know he is getting old. He spends most of his time in Mweiga, Nyeri.

You have talked much about Kibaki; what would you say about Uhuru? 

Uhuru has done very well. It is the challenges that have taken place in Kenya, that have slowed down his momentum. He has implemented most of the projects that Kibaki wanted done; roads, agriculture, health, housing Lapsset, the SGR and education have registered marked improvements. He may not have completed the projects yet but they are on course. If anything, development is a continuous process.

What are some of the challenges he has faced?

Uhuru’s number one problem has been the Deputy President, who immediately after elections in 2017 started campaigning to take over from him. How do you start campaigning yet there is a president who is going to be around for five years? After his deputy deserted him, Uhuru said this country would be ungovernable without appeasing Raila Odinga, and he called Raila to come and discuss Kenya. 

The country was at a crossroads. Remember the animosity that was there after the 2017 polls? It took the opposition leader and the president to end it. Even for the Cold War to end it took the Russian president his American counterpart to meet and shake hands.

Back to our context, you must never forget that in politics there are profits from disunity. Some people were never going to like to truce between Uhuru and Raila, even after they told us that they had agreed that Kenya is bigger and more important than any of them. From that day everyone has gained. The first person to disagree was the Number Two. 

One more thing I want to tell you is that the worst enemy in this country is corruption. Corruption has ruined this country and it is one of the things , in my view, why Uhuru called Raila to agree to work with so that they could forge a united front againt the vice. His own ministers, including the Deputy President, were not of much help to him. In fact many of them were caught in corrupt dealings. 

Uhuru has been criticised for over-borrowing. Is that a fair characterisation?

The main question to be addressed here is why borrow in the first place? Borrowing is never bad, but ensuring the money is used for the intended purpose is the challenge. Governments borrow all the time. If all the money borrowed for SGR, for instance, was spent properly in it, we would not have gone for that high figure. The bulk of what was borrowed went into people’s pockets. And that can be said of almost all the projects in this country. Look at the dams and many others.     BY DAILY NATION