Not even protocol stood in her way when she thought she was right

We have to give it to her. Lucy Kibaki had the rare courage of doing what she thought had to be to done. Where, when and how did not matter. In her world, it was first things first.

So, when it occurred to her that former Imenti Central MP Gitobu Imanyara’s presence at State House was undesirable, she did not hide her indignation.

In 2008, Mr Imanyara was part of a delegation of MPs from what was called the Small Parties Parliamentary Committee that was holding court with President Mwai Kibaki at the big house on the hill. The agenda? To discuss bow to get their man elected as Mr Speaker ahead of the opening of the 10th Parliament.

In footage aired by NTV, Mr Imanyara is seen narrating how he was surprised when State House official Stanley Murange and Head of Civil Service Francis Muthaura whispered to him that they wanted a quiet word with him outside.

In the corridors of State House, Mr Imanyara came face to face with Mrs Kibaki whom he says attempted to slap him and said he had no business being there. Reason? He had sued the First Lady on behalf of TV cameraman Derrick Clifford. Clifford’s case was that she had assaulted him in 2005.

The cameraman was covering her famous storming of the Daily Nation newsroom when he dared to film the First Lady against her express instructions.

Mr Imanyara had threatened to sue the First Lady for the State House run-in but changed his mind after a gentlemanly call from President Kibaki, although the government had initially denied the whole thing.

“The allegations border on character assassination and blackmail and are part of a wider political scheme aimed at besmirching the office of the First Lady,” a statement from the Presidential Press Service had said.

In December 2007, she slapped a protocol officer who had the misfortune of introducing her as “First Lady Mama Lucy Wambui” during a December 12 State House garden party.

And, in December 2004, Vice- President Moody Awori must have prayed for the ground he stood on to swallow him. In a most regrettable faux pas, the straight-thinking and eloquent politician toasted her as the “second lady”. It got tongues wagging and went down as one of the biggest protocol gaffes in our history.

The former State House Comptroller and private secretary to President Kibaki, Mr Matere Kereri, also got to know the unflattering side of the First Lady. He kept the president’s diary and was, therefore, privy to many of the leader’s personal and official secrets.

But Mr Kereri left State House not so smoothly after the First Lady decided he had to part company with the president — a man with whom he had been friends since 1959 and was his economics teacher at Makerere. “I left State House because the First Lady was not comfortable with me,” he told a Kenyan daily.

Also to suffer a measure of discomfort was World Bank Country Director Mokta Diop, who was the president’s neighbour and tenant. In 2005, he threw a rather raucous late night party when he was about to leave the country. Mama Lucy Kibaki could not stand the loud music. She stormed the technocrat’s residence and lectured him on good neighbourliness. Of course she saw to it that the music died.

Her no-nonsense mien would play out in public when she upbraided Internal Security minister George Saitoti for what she saw as shoddy response to the Molo oil deaths in 2009.