How Kimemia rose to dizzy heights under Kibaki and fell under Uhuru

Shortly after meeting Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission officers at their offices 10 days ago, journalists asked Mr Francis Thuita Kimemia the usual questions on what had transpired beyond the revolving doors at Integrity House.

He opened up and talked about the issues that forced him to step aside as Secretary to the Cabinet after his name appeared in the anti-graft agency’s confidential report to the President.

He then addressed a subject he would be expected to know a little more about — security.

“Having been in charge of security,” he said, “I think we need to do more. Nothing like this ever happened when I was in charge of security he said,” in reference to Garissa University College attack in which 148 people died.

He offered to assist the heads of security agencies if called upon, saying: “We still have institutional memory, whether we are in or out.”

The soft-spoken 58-year-old might as well have been foreseeing his exit from government, and this was made official when President Uhuru Kenyatta appointed Ms Monica Juma the new Secretary to the Cabinet.

Mr Kimemia, who started his career as a district officer 35 years ago, progressed steadily through the ranks, acquiring a treasure of knowledge on the lay of the land and nature of security.

He served in the civil service’s middle management, which contains such amorphous titles as assistant secretary, under secretary and deputy secretary in various ministries before becoming Ministry of Provincial Administration and Internal Security Permanent Secretary in 2008.

The powerful docket offers its holder access to the entire internal security as the accounting officer must always know what is happening. An understanding of the political situation is also essential.

POWERFUL FIGURE

By the time President Kibaki was finishing his second term in office, Mr Kimemia had grown from a faceless and unknown deputy secretary to a man always a step or two behind the President.

He would go on to be appointed Secretary to the Cabinet and Head of Public Service in 2012, taking on a bigger role that would, at the time of the transition, involve the team managing the hand-over to the Jubilee Coalition.

But he appeared to quickly fall out of favour with the new “digital” government.

In September 2013, barely four months after President Kenyatta took over, Mr Kimemia was replaced as Head of Civil Service by former Treasury Permanent Secretary Joseph Kinyua.

Monica Juma will now be taking over Mr Kimemia’s job, with the man from Ol Kalou going into retirement.