This first part of the series treats the Maxwell equations in the exterior of a slowly rotating Kerr black hole. By performing a first-order differential operator on each extreme Newman-Penrose (N-P) scalar in a Kinnersley tetrad, the resulting equation and the Teukolsky master equation for the extreme N-P component are both in the form of an inhomogeneous \textquotedblleft{spin-weighted Fackerell-Ipser equation\textquotedblright} (SWFIE) and constitute a weakly coupled system. We first prove energy estimate and integrated local energy decay (Morawetz) estimate for this type of inhomogeneous SWFIE following the method in (Dafermos and Rodnianski in Decay for solutions of the wave equation on Kerr exterior spacetimes I-II: the cases $|a|\ll ...