Kajiado County First Lady Edna Lenku, on Wednesday, March 8, opened up about how the Interior docket affected her husband, Joseph Ole Lenku.
The Kajiado Governor served as the country's Interior Cabinet Secretary (CS) from May 2013 to December 2014 at a time Kenya was fighting al Shabaab extremists from Somalia.
Edna, while appearing on Citizen TV’s JKLive, revealed that the media did not give her husband a fair chance in discharging his mandate.
“When my husband was the Interior CS, there were a lot of challenges that took a toll on our family,” she explained.
Edna remarked that Ole Lenku never stood a chance to succeed due to constant negative coverage by the media.
“My husband was under the spotlight and my children would ask me why newspapers were writing bad things about their father,” she detailed the struggle they went through.
On how she handled it, she explained, “I would repeatedly assure my kids that their father was a good person contrary to what was being written about him.”
Edna in particular took an issue with how September 21, 2013, Westgate Mall attack was covered by the media.
During the terrorist attack, Ole Lenku was quoted by the media as having stated, “The smoke you are seeing on the screens is because mattresses have been set on fire by the attackers to distract our efforts.”
This led to an avalanche of trolling from Kenyans who painted him as inept to handle such a sensitive docket.
“It was all lies, it was a creation of the media,” she vehemently denied.
Edna further revealed that there was a need to take care of leaders' mental health after they exit from public service mandate arguing that some were battling depression with nowhere to turn for help.
“Most leaders fall into depression after public service and they have no one to talk to.
“There should be a counseling centre for retired leaders to relieve what they passed through during the years under the spotlight,” she advised.
Ole Lenku was succeeded as Interior CS by Joseph Nkaissery in December 2014. He went on to win the Kajiado gubernatorial seat under Jubilee ticket in 2017 and successfully defended the seat under the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) ticket in 2022.
