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

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.

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]