A fresh controversy has erupted around a senior National Government Constituencies Development Fund (NG-CDF) official in Kilifi County after activists and political rivals accused him of allegedly attempting to manipulate public opinion through paid popularity surveys while facing a growing list of corruption and misconduct allegations.
Nelson Alfayo Nyangwara, an officer linked to the Malindi NG-CDF office and reportedly eyeing a future political career in Mombasa’s Nyali constituency, has become the subject of renewed scrutiny following claims that favourable opinion polls circulating online may have been influenced by financial inducements.
According to allegations made by individuals claiming to be familiar with internal campaign discussions, Nyangwara allegedly sought to secure positive ratings from polling firms in an effort to boost his public image as questions continue to emerge about his tenure in various NG-CDF offices. No evidence has publicly been produced proving that any polling organisation accepted money or altered survey findings, and the firms named in the allegations had not publicly responded to the claims at the time of publication.
The allegations come against a backdrop of broader concerns surrounding accountability within the NG-CDF system, which has repeatedly found itself at the centre of governance, transparency and public finance disputes in Kenya. The fund has previously faced legal challenges over its management structure and oversight mechanisms, with courts and civil society organisations raising concerns about accountability in the handling of public resources.
Activists claim that Nyangwara has previously served in several constituencies and has been the subject of multiple complaints relating to the management of public funds. Some of those claims have surfaced in petitions and activist campaigns, although many remain untested in court and no criminal conviction has been secured against him.
The latest accusations stem from reports that a group of human rights and accountability activists submitted complaints to the NG-CDF Board seeking investigations into the officer’s conduct. According to petitioners, Nyangwara allegedly violated public service regulations by engaging in political activities while still serving in a public office role.
The complaints also accuse him of using his position to cultivate political influence ahead of a possible run for elective office in Nyali. Petitioners argue that public officers are required to maintain political neutrality and avoid activities that could create conflicts between official duties and personal political ambitions.
Among the most serious allegations are claims that millions of shillings allocated for constituency development projects may have been misappropriated during his service in different NG-CDF stations. However, no court has made a determination on those allegations, and relevant investigative agencies have not publicly announced any criminal charges arising from the claims.
The controversy has also reignited debate about oversight within constituency development funds. In recent years, several NG-CDF officials across the country have faced investigations and arrests over alleged misuse of public resources, including procurement irregularities and disputed tender awards.
Political observers note that allegations involving opinion polling have become increasingly common as potential candidates seek to build momentum ahead of future elections. Polling firms often influence public perception, making claims of manipulation particularly sensitive in Kenya’s competitive political environment.
The NG-CDF itself has remained under intense public scrutiny, with recurring court battles over its constitutionality and management. While the Court of Appeal recently upheld the legality of the fund, judges emphasized the need for strong accountability mechanisms, including audits and financial oversight, to safeguard public resources.
As pressure mounts, accountability groups say they will continue pushing for investigations into the allegations against Nyangwara and other public officials accused of abusing public office.
For now, many of the claims remain allegations contained in petitions and activist complaints. Whether they result in formal investigations, disciplinary action or criminal proceedings will depend on findings by the NG-CDF Board, investigative agencies and other relevant authorities.
President William Ruto has said powerful fuel import interests are resisting plans to establish a regional oil refinery with Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote, insisting the project will nonetheless proceed as part of a long-term strategy to transform the region’s energy sector.
Speaking on Thursday during the Annual National Prayer Breakfast, Ruto said he had spoken with Dangote about the proposed refinery project and the opposition it was already attracting from players benefiting from continued fuel importation into the region.
“I had a chat with Mr Dangote yesterday, and he was telling me how much resistance has been built by the people we are buying fuel from now because they want to continue buying their fuel,” Ruto said.
“But we have to make those decisions that will change our country, that will transform our country.”
The President said Kenya and its regional partners were pursuing both short-term and long-term measures to address fuel challenges affecting the region.
According to Ruto, the proposed refinery project is aimed at strengthening regional fuel security and reducing dependence on imported petroleum products.
“And this year we are going to start building the refinery here,” he said.
The President noted that his administration had already sent a technical team several months ago to explore refinery models and energy infrastructure opportunities within Africa.
He said the team’s engagements led them to Dangote, whose refinery project in Nigeria has become one of the continent’s largest industrial undertakings.
“When I sent my team about six months ago to look around, they came across Aliko Dangote and what he is doing. They came back to me and I reached out to President Museveni,” Ruto said.
“I have reached out to colleagues in this region and we have agreed.”
Ruto said some reforms and investments may require temporary sacrifices but argued they were necessary for long-term transformation.
“Some of the time we have to forego temporary convenience for long-term transformation, and that is how we are going to build this great nation,” he said.
The remarks come weeks after Dangote publicly offered to build a major oil refinery in East Africa similar to his flagship refinery in Lagos, Nigeria.
Speaking during the Africa We Build Summit in Nairobi in April, Dangote said he was ready to construct a refinery capable of processing 650,000 barrels of oil per day if governments in the region supported the project.
“Even now, I can give commitment to the two presidents who are here; if they will support the refinery, we will build an identical one to the one we have in Nigeria, 650,000 barrels per day,” Dangote said at the summit attended by President Ruto and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
Dangote said the refinery could be completed within four to five years.
He argued that Africa had the resources, markets and financial institutions needed to fund large-scale industrial projects without overreliance on foreign investors.
The businessman also criticised Africa’s dependence on imported finished products despite having abundant raw materials.
“We are a continent of imports. We export raw materials, which means we export jobs, and when we import, we import poverty,” Dangote said.
His Lagos refinery currently processes 650,000 barrels per day and is expected to expand further, making it among the largest refineries globally.
Ruto backed Dangote’s proposal during the summit, saying Africa must move away from exporting raw materials while importing refined and finished products at higher costs.
The proposed East African refinery is expected to trigger further regional discussions involving Kenya, Uganda and other neighbouring countries on energy infrastructure and long-term fuel supply stability.
In the days leading to President William Ruto’s swearing-in, some supporters reportedly sent apologies to the President-elect explaining that they would not attend the Garden Party at State House. Instead, after leaving Kasarani, they would “turn right” to address what they described as a long-standing matter.
That “long-standing matter” was historical land injustices in Kiambu. Their immediate target was said to be the vast Kenyatta family estates between Kasarani and Gatundu, though not exclusively those holdings.
As I wrote in my earlier op-ed, Of Land and the Luo Bogeyman, during my childhood one could walk from Limuru to Gatundu without stepping on land owned by a peasant farmer.
The Kikuyu class divide between Uthamaki and Mungiki remains arguably Kenya’s most potent political problem. As explained in the op-ed, it contributed to the fallout between Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Jomo Kenyatta and to Daniel arap Moi’s rise to the vice presidency in what I have previously described as the Kikuyu-Kalenjin “power-for-land” pact.
Kikuyu class conflict has long been suppressed through the political tactic of manufacturing a siege mentality by inventing external enemies or political bogeymen. Jaramogi became the first victim of this politics. When it appeared that Jomo Kenyatta’s health was failing and Tom Mboya seemed poised to ascend to power, Mboya was assassinated and the bogeyman narrative expanded to target the entire Luo community through the 1969 oathing ceremonies.
Jomo survived the 1969 heart attack, but by the mid-1970s the question was not whether succession would happen, but when.
Those of us who, as we say in Gikuyu, have “eaten a bit more salt” can relate the demonization of William Ruto to the succession politics that unfolded during the Kenyatta era between the “Change the Constitution” campaign and the Njonjo inquiry. Those unfamiliar with that history can revisit it in Karimi and Ochieng’s book, The Kenyatta Succession.
Moi began his presidency by attempting to appease Uthamaki. I recall him frequently speaking Kikuyu and, on one occasion, delivering an entire prayer in the language. “Fuata Nyayo” was intended as an olive branch. But Uthamaki would have none of it.
The bogeyman campaign quickly began. How, people asked, could the country be led by a herdsman? Kikuyu masses were reassured that Moi was merely a passing cloud and that normal service would soon resume.
The hostility peaked during the 1983 Rungiri church service where Kiambu tycoon Samuel Githegi, in the presence of Charles Njonjo, declared: iguthua ndongoria itikinyagira nyeki — a flock led by a lame sheep does not find pasture.
Many Kenyans, particularly younger generations and those unfamiliar with history, believe the violence that accompanied the return of multiparty politics in 1992 was unprecedented. In reality, the violence mirrored the political turmoil that preceded the 1963 elections.
Yet Moi, the supposed bogeyman, the “passing cloud,” and the “limping sheep,” retired on his own terms.
Eventually, Uthamaki returned to power. Ironically, it was the political calculations of the so-called bogeyman alliance that made it possible: Moi’s Uhuru project and Raila Odinga’s “Kibaki Tosha” declaration. Moi appeared to believe that safeguarding his post-retirement interests required returning power to Uthamaki. Raila, meanwhile, realized that a divided opposition would ultimately hand victory to Uhuru Kenyatta.
Almost overnight, Raila became a Kikuyu hero. But the alliance was short-lived.
Mwai Kibaki was elected under a new political dispensation that promised to end tribalism and deliver a new constitution within 100 days. Uthamaki, however, had different ideas, which John Michuki famously rationalized through the metaphor of “handling liver” to describe the slippery nature of power.
Kibaki’s capture by Uthamaki ideology cost him the disputed 2007 re-election and pushed the country to the brink of civil war. Had the NARC Memorandum of Understanding been honoured, Kibaki would likely have secured a second term with ease.
Instead, Uthamaki embarked on what was described as gucokia rui mukaro — returning the river to its original course. Michuki began speaking Kikuyu in official meetings. Jomo Kenyatta’s portrait replaced Moi’s on the currency. The NARC dream collapsed, and the country has continued paying the price ever since.
I briefly advised Uhuru Kenyatta when he was opposition leader. The stint was short-lived because I lacked the deferential temperament expected of palace courtiers. One piece of advice I gave him was to rise above ethnic political mobilization.
Our last conversation was a brief phone call after I watched him on television being symbolically enthroned as muthamaki by Michuki and others. Had he resisted that path, he might have avoided ending up at the International Criminal Court. Then again, he might never have become president, considering that ICC sympathy significantly boosted his political fortunes.
The Uhuru-Ruto alliance was born out of an existential threat. They understood that if they did not stand together, they would fall separately. But once the ICC threat subsided, Uthamaki reverted to its default settings. “Hustler” and “Tanga Tanga” politics followed.
Uhuru’s legacy, in my view, will forever be tainted by the Building Bridges Initiative, the 2022 Bomas coup allegations, and continued attempts to undermine his successor. Why? Two reasons stand out.
The first is money.
Take the 11,000-acre Ruiru landholding. Northlands City alone occupies about 5,000 acres. At a conservative estimate of Sh50 million per acre, that translates to roughly Sh250 billion in land value, much of it surrounded by longstanding questions regarding acquisition records.
The second is dynastic hubris.
The 2010 Constitution outlawed individual portraits on Kenyan currency. When new currency designs were reportedly presented to Kibaki, with Uhuru serving as Finance Minister, Kibaki allegedly reacted angrily. A compromise was eventually reached, replacing the portrait with the Kenyatta International Convention Centre while still prominently featuring Jomo Kenyatta’s statue.
I am also told he reacted similarly to the proposed Bomas of Kenya Convention Centre project during a meeting in Paris, allegedly because it would overshadow the KICC.
To my friend Hassan Omar, you owe no apology for speaking your truth.
To my Kalenjin brothers and sisters, remain calm. This too shall pass. Moi overcame it, and William Ruto will as well.
To the opposition, Kikuyu voters have for many election cycles been mobilized to elect “one of our own” while simultaneously voting against Raila Odinga. There is little reason for them to wake up early and vote for you now. Uhuru Kenyatta and Rigathi Gachagua do not possess a unified Kikuyu vote to deliver. They are pursuing personal political interests.
To Uhuru Kenyatta, Rigathi Gachagua, Uthamaki ideologues, and ethnic chauvinists more broadly, normal service is not resuming. The bogeyman politics has run its course.
And to my fellow sons and daughters of Gikuyu and Mumbi, I leave you with three questions: What has Uthamaki done for us? How exactly has President Ruto wronged us? Kihooto kiha?
Writer is the chairperson of the Presidential Council of Economic Advisers.
Originally published on X, May 27, 2026
A fresh political storm has erupted inside the ruling United Democratic Alliance after a section of lawmakers from the Mt Kenya region demanded the resignation of the party’s Secretary General Hassan Omar over remarks they described as ethnic profiling against the Kikuyu community.
The legislators, who addressed the press on Wednesday, dismissed Hassan Omar’s public apology and clarification as inadequate, insisting that the comments he allegedly made during a political gathering in Mombasa had crossed the line and could not be brushed aside with a statement.
The MPs accused the UDA Secretary General of making divisive remarks while discussing historical land injustices at the Coast, arguing that his statements unfairly targeted members of the Mt Kenya community and risked fuelling ethnic tensions at a politically sensitive moment for the country.
In a strongly worded address, the lawmakers said the ruling party was founded on the promise of national unity and inclusivity and warned that leaders occupying senior positions should not engage in rhetoric that appears to alienate communities.
“As elected Members of Parliament, we speak today with one clear and equal vocal voice. We flatly reject the statement of clarification and apology issued by the UDA Secretary General, Honourable Hassan Omar. An apology cannot erase or excuse calculated ethnic profiling,” the MPs declared.
The lawmakers maintained that every Kenyan has a constitutional right to live, invest, own property and conduct business in any part of the country without intimidation or ethnic targeting. They argued that Omar’s remarks undermined those principles and threatened the cohesion the Kenya Kwanza administration has repeatedly preached since taking power.
The MPs demanded Hassan Omar’s immediate resignation from the powerful party position and issued a 48-hour ultimatum, warning that failure to step aside would trigger further political action within the ruling coalition.
“We demand nothing less than the immediate resignation of Honourable Hassan Omar. Enough is enough. Pack your things and leave our party,” the legislators said.
The dispute now threatens to expose widening cracks within President William Ruto’s ruling party at a time when political alignments ahead of the 2027 Kenyan General Election are already beginning to take shape.
The controversy stems from remarks reportedly made by Hassan Omar during a political event at the Coast where he spoke about historical land ownership disputes, an issue that has remained politically sensitive for decades in the region. Critics interpreted the remarks as targeting Kikuyu landowners and business people living at the Coast, sparking backlash from leaders allied to the Kenya Kwanza administration.
Since the remarks surfaced, politicians from Mt Kenya and other regions have intensified pressure on the UDA leadership to take disciplinary action against the Secretary General, arguing that the party cannot claim to champion unity while tolerating statements perceived to be ethnically divisive.
The growing rebellion also places additional pressure on the UDA leadership to contain internal tensions that have increasingly emerged in recent months over succession politics, regional interests and competition for influence within President Ruto’s camp.
Some grassroots leaders from Mt Kenya have already threatened to reconsider their loyalty to the ruling party if no action is taken against Hassan Omar, a development that could complicate UDA’s efforts to maintain its political dominance in one of its key support bases.
Despite the uproar, Hassan Omar has defended himself, saying his remarks were taken out of context and insisting that he was addressing historical injustices rather than targeting any community. However, the explanation appears to have done little to calm anger among a section of UDA leaders who now want tougher action taken against him.
Kenya’s opposition pulled its best stunt yet on April 21, 2026, and the country barely blinked. The Linda Mwanachi-driven protests that were supposed to shake Kenya and rattle State House turned into a damp squib of embarrassing proportions.
Kenyans, increasingly wise to the tricks of a rudderless opposition brigade, stayed home, went to work, and carried on with their lives.
The flopped protests did not just fail—they delivered a loud, unmistakable verdict. President William Ruto is delivering, and most Kenyans now see through the noise.
President Ruto launches the Rironi-Mau Summit road project, one of many transformative developments his clueless opponents ignore while staging failed protests with zero alternative plans for Kenya. [Photo: Courtesy]
The Flopped Protests Revealed an Opposition Running on Rage, Not Ideas
Let us call this what it is. The Linda Mwanachi movement, propped up by ODM rebels and political opportunists, did not take to the streets because they had a plan for Kenya. They took to the streets — or tried to — because disruption is the only tool left in their shrinking toolkit. The flopped protests on April 21 were not a movement. They were a performance, and Kenyans refused to buy a ticket.
At the centre of this theatre stands Siaya Governor James Orengo, a man whose own county continues to underperform on basic service delivery while he dedicates his energy to organizing street demonstrations in Nairobi. Then there is Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna, young enough to know better, yet choosing political grandstanding over the issue-based politics that his generation deserves. These are the faces of Linda Mwanachi—not reformers, not visionaries, just politicians using public anger as fuel for personal relevance.
The critical question that neither Orengo nor Sifuna has answered remains this: What is your alternative plan for Kenya? What specific policies do you propose to replace what Ruto is doing? The silence is deafening.
Protesting Fuel Prices Without Understanding Global Realities Is Political Dishonesty
The trigger for these flopped protests was the fuel price increase announced by the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority on April 14, 2026. EPRA set retail prices at Ksh 197.60 for super petrol, Ksh 196.63 for diesel, and Ksh 152.78 for kerosene, effective from April 15 to May 14, citing tax components and recent legislative amendments in the petroleum sector.
Deputy President Kithure Kindiki addressed this directly while speaking in Tharaka Nithi on April 18. He pointed squarely at the Middle East crisis pitting Iran against the United States and Israel as the real driver of disruptions in global oil supply. Insecurity at the Strait of Hormuz — one of the world’s most critical oil shipping routes — has pushed fuel prices upward across the globe, not just in Kenya.
“Going to the streets for protests won’t be a solution,” Kindiki said. “Even if Kenyans were to go to the streets to protest, at the end of the day the prices would still be high.” He reminded Kenyans that when opposition figures led protests over maize flour prices in 2023, the prices never fell during the demonstrations. They only dropped after the government deployed targeted policies to regulate them. The same logic applies to fuel. Street rage does not move oil tankers through safer routes.
Organizing protests over a global commodity pricing crisis caused by geopolitical instability is not activism. It is political dishonesty dressed up as public concern. The opposition knows this. They simply hope Kenyans do not.
Gachagua Cheers From the Couch While Asking Others to Risk the Streets
Former DP Rigathi Gachagua loudly cheers protests from his couch, blesses Gen Z to risk the streets, and then conveniently stays indoors on the material day with his family. [Photo: Courtesy]
Perhaps the most revealing subplot of the flopped protests saga involves former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua. Impeached, sidelined, and politically wounded, Gachagua has thrown his energy into encouraging Kenyans—particularly from his Kikuyu extraction—to pour onto the streets in large numbers. He offered his “blessings” to Gen Z demonstrators during a K24 TV interview on April 20, urging security chiefs to avoid excessive force.
What Gachagua conspicuously did not do was step onto those streets himself. Neither did his family, nor did Orengo’s and Sifuna’s. The pattern is consistent across the entire planless opposition brigade—they ignite the fire and watch others risk the burns.
They live-tweet demonstrations from safe, air-conditioned rooms while asking young Kenyans to brave batons and tear gas for a cause the opposition itself cannot define with any policy coherence. This is not leadership. It is manipulation. And more Kenyans are recognizing it for exactly what it is.
Three Days of Planned June Protests Are Already Built on Nothing
The opposition is now touting a three-day protest programme scheduled from June 24 to 26, 2026. If April 21 is any indication, Kenyans should expect more failed protests. The June plan carries the same foundational weakness — it is built on manufactured outrage, not on any concrete policy alternative that the opposition is willing to put before the public.
President Ruto has spread major infrastructure and development projects across the country. Roads, affordable housing units, healthcare programmes, and agricultural interventions are moving. Are these perfect? No government project is. But they represent deliberate, documented effort.
If the opposition believes these programmes are misguided, the democratic avenue available to them is issue-based politics—detailed policy critiques, alternative budget proposals, and credible manifestos. What Kenyans do not need is a cycle of rage-bait demonstrations designed more to generate political heat than to solve national problems.
Kenya is not short of challenges. But it is also not short of progress under the current administration. The opposition’s job—if it is serious about governance—is to engage that progress honestly, challenge it on merit, and present something better. Until Orengo, Sifuna, Gachagua, and the rest of the Linda Mwanachi brigade do that hard work, their flopped protests will keep flopping. And Kenyans will keep walking past.
Dennis Onyango, the man who served as Raila Odinga’s press secretary and personal spokesman for decades, has fired a political grenade into the heart of the post-Raila succession battle, revealing in explosive detail that Embakasi East MP Babu Owino was never part of the late opposition chief’s carefully constructed exit strategy from the broad-based government arrangement with President William Ruto.
Speaking on Citizen TV’s Monday Report on March 30, Onyango did not mince words.
While confirming that Senate Minority Leader James Orengo and ODM Secretary-General Edwin Sifuna were deliberate fixtures in Raila’s contingency architecture, he drew a sharp, categorical line at the politician who has been loudest in claiming Baba’s mantle.
“He never had Babu anywhere in his thinking. He thought he was going to be a trouble,” Onyango said of the Nairobi lawmaker who has publicly declared, “baada ya Baba ni Babu.”
The disclosure strips Owino of an aura he has been cultivating since Raila’s death, one that positioned him alongside Sifuna and Orengo as the vanguard of the “Jeshi ya Baba” militant resistance.
Onyango had earlier, in February, affirmed that Raila never named a preferred successor, trusting party institutions to determine who would emerge.Monday’s interview went further, explicitly separating the wheat from the chaff.
Onyango’s revelations build directly on disclosures made days earlier by Raila’s former legal advisor Paul Mwangi.
Mwangi, speaking in an exclusive interview on Saturday, March 28, claimed that Raila deliberately positioned Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna as an “exit plan” while cooperating with President William Ruto, carefully structuring his political moves to ensure he was never boxed into a single corner.
Mwangi described the current ODM internal turmoil as a clash between two factions that have long coexisted within Raila’s orbit: a “political-diplomatic” wing and a “militant” wing, arguing that both sides legitimately reflect different aspects of his leadership style.
Raila, Mwangi insisted, would never engage in anything without an exit strategy. If things did not work out, or if there was a clash on the cooperative side, he would turn to the militant faction and rally them as a fallback.
Onyango on Monday confirmed that logic, then added the crucial asterisk that Mwangi had left hanging. Yes, Sifuna and Orengo were part of the plan. Babu was not. He was a liability calculation, not a strategic asset.
The timing is devastating for Owino.
In February, he had told a local TV station that Raila’s final message was that ODM must produce a presidential candidate and should not be fully in the broad-based government, presenting himself as the faithful interpreter of Baba’s vision.He has also publicly declared his interest in the ODM party leadership.
Onyango’s assessment now positions Owino as a man freelancing on a brand that its owner apparently never fully endorsed for him.
The broader context in which these disclosures land is one of acute ODM crisis.
Dr Oburu Oginga, who ascended to the party leadership following Raila’s death, has staked his authority on institutional consolidation, signalling he will not seek elective office in 2027 but will instead serve as a custodian of the movement.
That transition, however, has been anything but smooth. At the Linda Mwananchi faction’s parallel “People’s NDC” at Ufungamano House on March 27, Sifuna openly rejected serving under the new leadership structure, declaring he would not be “the SG of mediocrity” and telling Oburu to find his own Secretary-General.
Sifuna, who appeared to have accepted his fate after his ouster, drew a firm line against serving under what he called a new leadership lacking credibility, while honoring his tenure under Raila as the greatest privilege of his political life.
The Ufungamano meeting was briefly disrupted when police officers attempted to gain access to the venue, prompting Sifuna to appeal for calm and challenge the officers directly from the podium.
The layered disclosures illuminate, perhaps more vividly than any previous account, the architecture of Raila’s political genius.
He maintained parallel power centres, ensured no single alliance left him without leverage, and ran a diplomatic track alongside a militant one.
Both the pro-Ruto and anti-Ruto camps within ODM have claimed to represent Raila’s wishes, with outcomes likely to have far-reaching ramifications on the political landscape heading to 2027.
What Onyango has now clarified is that not everyone who claimed a seat at that table was actually invited.
For Babu Owino, the revelation is more than a bruised ego moment.
It lands as he positions himself as a credible Nairobi gubernatorial aspirant and potential ODM party leader, ambitions that depend substantially on the legitimacy that Raila’s posthumous endorsement, real or implied, confers.
That endorsement, according to the man who knew Raila best, was never there.
The question now roiling ODM’s corridors is who will inherit the militant faction’s street firepower, and whether Sifuna and Orengo, the two figures Raila actually trusted with his escape hatch, can harness that energy without the maestro who designed the trap.
Barely a fortnight after burying Emurua Dikirr Member of Parliament Johana Ng’eno, the constituency has been plunged into a three-way succession contest, with the late legislator’s widow, Naiyanoi Ntutu, formally endorsed by the family and a majority of elders from the Kapkaon clan to carry the United Democratic Alliance ticket in the by-election now scheduled for May 14.
The endorsement, which came out of a consultative meeting held at Naiyanoi’s matrimonial home in Mogondo village on Thursday, March 12, was attended by more than 300 elders who had gathered ostensibly to offer condolences but also to deliberate on the political future of a constituency regarded as one of the most volatile stretches of the South Rift. The gathering resolved unanimously to back the 29-year-old lawyer as the successor to her husband, who had won and defended the seat across three successive general elections since the constituency’s creation in 2013.
Ng’eno, 53, died on February 28 when the Airbus H125 helicopter he was travelling in crashed and burst into flames in a forested section of Chepkiep, Mosop Sub-County in Nandi County. The aircraft had made an emergency landing due to bad weather before the pilot attempted a second takeoff, an attempt that ended catastrophically, scattering debris and metal fragments across the crash site. Ng’eno perished alongside pilot George Were, photojournalist Nick Kosgei, Kenya Forest Service ranger Amos Kipngetich Rotich, teacher Carlos Robert Keter and Narok County protocol officer Wycliff Rono.
The push for family succession gathered momentum during the burial on March 6, when the MP’s mother, Mary Temas, made an emotional appeal before a gathering that included President William Ruto and his deputy Kithure Kindiki. Standing at the graveside, she declared that the parliamentary seat would not leave her family, urging constituents to honour her son’s memory by keeping the leadership baton within his household. The statement set the tone for the endorsement that followed days later.
Naiyanoi, who married Ng’eno in August 2018 at Emurua Dikirr Secondary School when she was 22 and he was 46, had until now remained conspicuously removed from constituency affairs, her public profile limited to the quiet orbit of a legislator’s household. Her late husband had at the time been the oldest bachelor in Parliament serving his second term, with pressure from constituents and fellow leaders over the absence of a spouse something of a running commentary in local political discourse. The marriage drew prominent attention, including a photograph of the couple with ODM leader Raila Odinga taken at the wedding grounds.
In her first public political statement since her husband’s death, Naiyanoi thanked the family, clan and constituents for the responsibility placed on her shoulders and urged the voters of Emurua Dikirr to rally behind her candidature once the election date is formally announced. She called for peaceful and mature politics, invoking the spirit her husband was known for in the constituency. Family spokesman Johana Langat echoed the appeal, calling on residents to give her the opportunity to complete the remainder of the parliamentary term.
Clan elder David Ngetich framed the endorsement as a transitional arrangement rather than a long-term political settlement, arguing that at one and a half years remaining before the next general election, the broader question of future leadership could await a more deliberate community decision in 2027. The argument is one calculated to pre-empt internal resistance by presenting Naiyanoi’s candidacy as continuity rather than entrenchment.
However, the picture is not as settled as the family would wish. A dissident section of the Kapkaon clan has rallied behind Bernard Rono, a cousin of the late MP who serves as an administrator in Narok County government. Rono has maintained a deliberately low profile since his name entered circulation, a posture that political observers in the region read as tactical, allowing the family grief to exhaust itself before he makes a more assertive move toward the UDA ticket.
Complicating the succession calculus further is the return of David Keter, a businessman who twice ran against Ng’eno in previous general elections, finishing second on both occasions. Keter declared interest in the seat over the weekend, also positioning himself within the UDA fold. His entry signals that the contest will almost certainly be decided at party nominations level, with the primary expected to be fiercely contested across a constituency of 44,447 registered voters spread across the four wards of Ilkerin, Mogondo, Kapsasian and Ololmasani.
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission gazetted May 14 as the by-election date, scheduling the Emurua Dikirr poll alongside two ward by-elections in Porro Ward in Samburu County and Endo Ward in Elgeyo-Marakwet County. Under the IEBC timetable published in the Kenya Gazette on March 13, parties intending to field candidates must submit the names of nominees for party primaries by March 25, with the final list of party candidates due with the commission by April 7. Official nomination of candidates will take place on April 15 and 16, with campaigns running until May 11, 48 hours before polling day.
The commission told Parliament that the Sh59.38 million budgeted for the Emurua Dikirr contest had not been included in the Supplementary I estimates, forcing the agency to seek additional funds from the legislature. National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetang’ula had been expected to issue the vacancy writ within 90 days of the seat falling vacant, and the gazette notice confirms that the constitutional process is now firmly in motion.
For Naiyanoi, the endorsement represents a political baptism by fire. She steps into a contest shaped by the grief of an entire constituency that had known no other representative since Emurua Dikirr was carved out of the old Kilgoris seat. Ng’eno was at the very core of the constituency’s creation, having come within a whisker of winning the Kilgoris seat in the disputed 2007 elections before ethnic boundary delimitations by the Andrew Ligale commission produced a new seat tailor-made for the Kipsigis community of Trans Mara East.
The late MP had served on the Departmental Committee on Housing, Urban Planning and Public Works, which he chaired in the current parliament, and was credited with shepherding the Affordable Housing Act of 2024 through committee. He had also sat on the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee in the 12th Parliament and was admitted to the bar as an Advocate of the High Court as recently as September 2025, fulfilling a professional ambition that paralleled his legislative career. It is a legacy that his widow, also a lawyer, is now being asked to extend.
The by-election will offer the first gauge of whether sympathy votes, clan solidarity and the weight of the Ng’eno name are sufficient to carry an untested candidate into Parliament, or whether the appetite for a familiar opposition figure such as Keter or a clan insider like Rono will prove stronger in a constituency that has known spirited contestation at every electoral cycle since 2013.
The afternoon of Sunday, December 30, 2007, was supposed to be the moment Kenya demonstrated to the world that it could manage a peaceful democratic transition.
Instead, it became the hour in which a group of powerful men gathered in a State House boardroom and decided that the will of the people was an obstacle to be managed rather than a verdict to be honoured.
What follows is drawn from NTV’s landmark investigative documentary Stolen Ballot, which aired this week to convulse a country still carrying the wounds of the violence that erupted hours after that stolen declaration, as well as from contemporaneous reporting, the public admission of Royal Media Services chairman Samuel Kamau Macharia in March 2025, international election observer records, and the findings of the Kriegler Commission.
Together, they construct an account so detailed, so corroborated, and so chilling in its institutional precision that it can no longer be described as allegation. It is history.
The Room Where It Was Decided
Inside a State House boardroom, five men knew everything. President Mwai Kibaki sat among them. Flanking him were his government spokesman Alfred Mutua, the Deputy Chief of the General Staff General Julius Karangi, Head of the Public Service Francis Muthaura, and Internal Security minister John Michuki, one of the most feared political operators in the country.
Each man had a role. Each man understood the stakes. And each man understood that what was being planned carried the seed of the violence that would follow.
Former Chief of the Defence Forces Gen (Rtd) Julius Karangi.
The operation was structured, according to those who later spoke on record, with the deliberate architecture of a military mission. Information was shared on a strict need-to-know basis. Different operatives were assigned isolated tasks. No one outside the five was permitted to see the full picture.
It was General Karangi, Kenya’s most celebrated tactical commander, the man who would later mastermind the bloodless recapture of the Somali port city of Kismayu from Al-Shabaab without losing a single soldier, who gave the operation its discipline.
His presence in that room was not incidental. He was there because what was being planned required the kind of precise, compartmentalised execution he had perfected on the battlefield.
“I was told: we do not know how the day will end, but we know Kibaki must remain president.” — Nimrod Mbai, Kitui East MP, then police sergeant
Mutua has since confirmed the composition of that room himself, speaking on national television in the days after Kibaki’s death in 2022.
He described the President’s anxiety, the calls being monitored, and the mood of controlled urgency that gripped State House as the hours wore on. He did not use the word fraud. But what he described was something far more deliberate than a disputed result.
The Tallying Centre in Chaos
To understand what happened in State House, one must first understand what was happening at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre, where the Electoral Commission of Kenya was conducting the national tally. By the morning of December 30, the count had taken on a deeply suspicious character.
Former ECK commissioner Jack Tumwa told NTV that commissioners had expected results to begin arriving by 10pm on election night, December 27. They did not. The following morning, results were still trickling in at a pace that mystified officials who had run elections before.
More troublingly, some returning officers from constituencies in Nairobi itself could not be reached by telephone. Nairobi is not a remote constituency. There was no logistical excuse for the silence.
Early results showed Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement holding a commanding lead. Media houses running parallel tallies were reporting it.
The Nation Media Group had prepared a front page carrying the words “President-Elect” with Odinga’s photograph. It was never published.
Then, without explanation, the character of the count changed. Results from constituencies in the Mount Kenya region, which had been conspicuously absent, arrived in a cluster.
The numbers were startling.
ECK chairman Samuel Kivuitu himself had been overheard remarking that if the returning officers from Kiambaa had been cooking the results, they were now overcooking them, and that even if they had decided to walk to the tallying centre on foot they would already have arrived.
Commissioner Muturi Kigano later tried to characterise the remark as a tasteless joke. Commissioner Tumwa characterised it differently. “Really, there was something wrong,” he said. “We were very suspicious.”
Four commissioners issued a formal statement expressing reservations about the process. They asked for transparency. They were ignored.
Outside the hall, the government was furious with the media. Minister John Michuki convened an emergency meeting with media executives at Harambee House and accused broadcasters of inflaming tensions by reporting Odinga’s early lead from their own parallel tallies.
KBC editor-in-chief Waithaka Waihenya was present. He described Michuki as agitated.
The one person he recalled as calm was Muthaura, who spoke quietly. The contrast between the two men was telling. Muthaura, as events would show, already knew exactly how the situation was going to resolve.
The Phone Call to Cut the Power
By Sunday afternoon, the pace of events inside KICC had become unmanageable. The opposition was on the stage. William Ruto, then the Eldoret North MP, was pressing Kivuitu at close quarters, demanding verification of constituency tallies that did not match the forms signed by ODM agents.
Martha Karua and the late Mutula Kilonzo were pressing from the Kibaki side. GSU officers had been deployed to the floor. Someone passed word that one of the politicians present was armed with a grenade.
The government was watching and growing increasingly alarmed. The fear, Mutua later explained, was specific and legal. If Kibaki was declared the winner by the commission, Raila’s team would immediately seek a court injunction to block the swearing-in. The declaration had to happen, and it had to happen fast, and it had to happen under conditions where no judge could intervene in time.
Mutua picked up the phone and called Philip Kisia, the managing director of KICC. The instruction was direct: cut the power to the tallying hall. Kisia declined.
A second call came. This time, Mutua placed a cabinet minister on the line. Kisia later confirmed that the minister read out the names of officials sitting with the President at State House.
The message was unmistakable: this was a direct order from the highest level of government.
Kisia walked to the power room with a technician named Ombati. The rest of the staff had gone home. He threw the switch himself.
“I told him, because I know how cameras work, to turn off the lights at KICC.” — Alfred Mutua, then Government Spokesman
The vast hall of the KICC plunged into darkness. Opposition politicians who had been monitoring the tally table were suddenly disoriented. In the confusion, the next phase of the plan moved.
The Secret Recording
Before the blackout, Kivuitu had been under sustained pressure from multiple directions. He had been refusing to take Mutua’s calls. Kisia eventually persuaded him to speak with the government spokesman, and the two men spoke in Kamba for approximately ten minutes. No one present understood what was said. When the call ended, Kivuitu asked Kisia for a desk.
Former Election Commission Chairman Samuel Kivuitu (right) addressing a press conference at KICC just before the announcement of the results of the disputed 2007 General Elections.
He was then walked to a separate room within KICC where a KBC camera crew was waiting. The recording was done there, away from the chaotic hall, away from the rival politicians, in a controlled environment that the government had arranged. Kisia took a deliberate decision that only the national broadcaster would record the moment.
Waihenya, receiving orders simultaneously from Mutua, Muthaura, Michuki, and a senior military officer, had already dispatched an Outside Broadcast van to State House before the declaration had even been made. He had not been told the result. He did not need to be.
Kivuitu’s voice on that tape declared Mwai Kibaki the winner of the 2007 presidential election. The tape was then placed inside a sock worn by a member of the KBC team, as Waihenya had instructed, and taken out of the building.
The opposition realised something was happening. They tried to break down the door of the room where the recording had been made. They were too late.
The Extraction
Police Sergeant Nimrod Mbai had been placed on standby since that afternoon. He had been called in from his day off by Mutua, who had brought him to the third floor of KICC and briefed him on a mission involving Kivuitu. His task was to ensure the ECK chairman could be evacuated safely if violence broke out inside the tallying centre.
Mbai was not selected at random. He was one of a small number of officers with a special access card that allowed movement through every section of the building.
He had been taken to a CID shooting range earlier that afternoon where his weapon, a Ceska pistol, was test-fired. Officers then offered him a second firearm in case the first jammed.
He declined the second gun. He had been told, in terms he found unmistakable, that what was about to happen was expected to be dangerous.
The two men, Mbai and Kivuitu, had met earlier and agreed on a coded password. When it was spoken, Kivuitu would know it was time to move.
The moment the lights went out, Mbai stepped forward, tapped Kivuitu on the shoulder, and said the word. He took a green file from the table, which he was told contained the electoral results.
The two men left through a side exit and descended to the basement parking. Kivuitu was elderly and asked to be taken slowly.
The walk that Mbai, an athlete, could have completed in one minute took four. His own description of what was running through his mind in those four minutes belongs to the historical record of what Kenya did to itself that evening: “This was war in my mind.”
Outside KICC, a vehicle was waiting. Alfred Mutua was driving. The car was immediately flanked by a security convoy. It moved through Nairobi toward State House at speed. At the gate, officers were already waiting.
Five Minutes to Air
Former Kenya Broadcasting Corporation Editor-in-Chief Waithaka Waihenya.
Back at KBC’s studios, Waihenya was surrounded by GSU officers. He could not move to the toilet without an armed escort. One of the calls he received that evening threatened him directly. He was told the situation was bigger than him and that he had better announce the results.
He refused to be pressured, but he had the tape, and he had his orders, and within five minutes of returning to the studio, Kivuitu’s pre-recorded declaration was broadcast on the national broadcaster.
Waihenya later revealed that as the broadcast went live, he could hear the President’s voice on a speakerphone that had not been switched off. Kibaki said, in Swahili, that he wanted to see it on television. He saw it.
Minutes later, at State House, Mutua walked into the room and told the President what had happened. “Kibaki hugged me,” Mutua said. “It was the first time he hugged me.” Muthaura and Michuki embraced. The relief was physical. Outside the compound, Kenya was beginning to burn.
The Macharia Confession
The NTV documentary did not emerge in a vacuum. Its most devastating corroboration came not from the documentary itself but from a speech delivered a year before it aired, at a funeral in Machakos on March 15, 2025.
Royal Media Services chairman Samuel Kamau Macharia stood up to honour a dead friend, retired Colonel James Gitahi, and fulfilled a pact they had made: whichever of them died first, the other would tell the truth about 2007.
Macharia told the mourners that his network’s parallel tallying system had given him complete data showing Odinga had won the election. His data showed a margin of 1.8 million votes in Odinga’s favour. He was then, he said, taken from his home at night. All the returning officers from the Mount Kenya region were rounded up.
Their official Forms 16A were taken. Macharia was transported to his own office, where he found men whose names he chose not to give. Together, they changed the figures. Kibaki won.
The Macharia statement was reported widely and dismissed by some as the grieving embellishments of an elderly political partisan. In light of the NTV documentary and the accounts of Mbai, Kisia, Waihenya, and the ECK commissioners, it is considerably harder to make that dismissal.
“Our data was showing Raila had won with 1.8 million votes. I was picked from my house at night… we changed all those figures, and Kibaki won.” — S.K. Macharia, RMS Chairman, March 2025
What the International Record Shows
Kenya did not conduct this operation unobserved. The European Union’s chief election observer, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, declared the elections flawed, finding that the ECK had failed to establish the credibility of the tallying process to the satisfaction of all parties.
The EU noted specific constituencies where results read out in the presence of their observers did not match the tallies later announced by the commission. In the Molo constituency, the discrepancy was flagged explicitly.
The Carter Center raised similar concerns. A diplomatic cable from the United States Embassy in Nairobi, declassified and published in 2012, showed that Ambassador Michael Ranneberger assessed the situation in five different scenarios and concluded that in all of them the margin of victory for either side was slim and ultimately unknowable.
His cable did note evidence of rigging on both sides, a qualification that has been cited by Kibaki’s defenders but which does not in any way address the specific sequence of institutional fraud described by the insiders who have now spoken.
ECK chairman Kivuitu himself, speaking on January 2, 2008, told journalists outside his Nairobi home that he did not know whether Kibaki had won the election. He said he had been pressured by the PNU to announce the results. He said he had contemplated resignation.
He did not resign. He went to a room in KICC, he spoke in Kamba for ten minutes with Mutua, he asked for a desk, and he read a result into a KBC camera.
The Kriegler Commission, established under the terms of the Kofi Annan-brokered peace deal, found that electoral fraud had been rampant and had begun at the polling station level.
Its central and devastating conclusion was that the errors and manipulations in the tallying process were so great and so widespread that it was impossible to reconstruct from the formal record who had actually won.
That conclusion has often been cited as grounds for ambiguity. It is more accurately read as a legal description of evidence destruction.
The Legal Vacuum and the Price Paid
The declaration triggered violence within minutes. Across Nairobi and in the Rift Valley, the Nyanza region, and Mombasa, communities that had voted for Odinga in overwhelming numbers took to the streets. Police opened fire with live ammunition.
In Eldoret, a church sheltering Kikuyu families was set alight. More than 1,000 Kenyans died. Six hundred thousand were displaced. The country did not recover its institutional confidence for years and arguably has not recovered it fully even now.
Kofi Annan brokered a power-sharing deal that installed Odinga as Prime Minister under a Grand Coalition Government. Kenya got a new constitution in 2010. The ECK was dissolved. But no one was charged with the theft of the election.
No one was prosecuted for the midnight roundup of returning officers in the Mount Kenya region.
No one answered in court for the switching of the KICC power supply, the pre-arranged recording, the pre-positioned OB van at State House, the password-activated extraction of Kivuitu through a darkened building by an armed officer who had been told this was war.
Commissioner Tumwa has since said plainly that he believes Odinga was denied the presidency by manipulation. He said, with the weight of having been in that hall, that he thinks Raila Odinga would have won.
A Reckoning Eighteen Years Late
What is remarkable about the week in which the NTV documentary Stolen Ballot has aired is not that new facts have emerged. Most of these facts have been in circulation in fragments for years. What is remarkable is that the men who were present have now spoken with a directness that the passage of time and the deaths of Kibaki and Kivuitu have made possible. Mutua confirmed the core of the operation on national television years ago.
Mbai, now a member of parliament, has given chapter-and-verse testimony. Kisia has confirmed he threw the switch. Waihenya has described the sock, the GSU escort, the speakerphone on which he heard the President’s voice. Macharia has described the night abduction and the altered forms.
Against this record, Commissioner Kigano’s insistence that the Electoral Commission simply announced whatever the returning officers delivered is not a defence. It is a description of the mechanism by which the fraud was laundered through an institution designed to provide it with legal cover.
What the country is owed is not merely acknowledgement but a formal reckoning: a truth process with legal authority, the ability to compel testimony, and the mandate to establish an official record. Kenya paid for the absence of such a process in blood.
It continues to pay for it in the corrosive distrust that attaches to every election result, every commission, every announcement from a podium about the people’s choice.
The lights at KICC went out at Mutua’s instruction. They have not fully come back on since.
The political empire Raila Odinga spent four decades assembling is now fracturing along family lines, with his daughter Winnie said to have personally issued instructions locking the Orange Democratic Movement’s interim party leader, Dr Oburu Oginga, out of the iconic Capitol Hill offices in Nairobi that served for a generation as the nerve centre of the country’s most consequential opposition movement.
At the same time, long-serving aides broke down in tears on Wednesday as a sweeping purge of Raila’s personal secretariat unfolded behind closed doors at the very compound they can no longer freely enter, five months after the former premier drew his last breath in Kerala, India.
The lockout of the party from its historic home is rooted in a property claim that redraws the battle lines within ODM entirely. Party insiders and sources familiar with the matter say Raila Odinga personally purchased the entire building housing the Capitol Hill office during his lifetime, vesting full ownership in the Odinga family rather than the party.
With the building now a family asset, the ODM leadership under Oburu has no legal claim to the premises, and Winnie, Raila’s daughter, has moved to enforce that reality.
The compound where generations of Kenyan politicians sought the former prime minister’s counsel, where alliances were sealed and presidential campaigns were plotted, is now sealed off from the party he founded.
The family’s grip extends further than Capitol Hill. Oburu has also been barred from using the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Foundation, known as JOOF, for any party-related activities.
The foundation’s gardens, which were recently renovated to accommodate gatherings of up to a hundred people and which hosted ODM events regularly under Raila’s tenure, are now off limits.
In a development that deepens the proprietary dispute, sources allege that Raila also finalised the purchase of the JOOF land outright before his death, converting what had long been a Kenya Railways leasehold of over four decades into full Odinga family ownership.
Both the party’s spiritual home and its most prestigious event venue have, in effect, passed to a private estate.
Stripped of both addresses, Oburu has relocated ODM’s operational base to a residence on Riverside Drive, a secluded property in one of Nairobi’s most exclusive corridors near Strathmore University.
The Riverside facility, insiders say, was acquired by a UK-based engineer who has been a long-standing financier of ODM, injecting a layer of external financial dependency into the party’s leadership transition at precisely the moment it can least afford questions about independence and direction.
Oburu has fitted the new address with a security detail that includes a chase car and a helicopter reportedly kept on standby, a projection of stature that signals his determination to be seen as wielding genuine executive authority over the party machinery.
It was against this backdrop of contested territory and competing claims that the Wednesday staff meeting at Capitol Hill turned into something close to a wake. The meeting, called through a memo dated March 5 by Raila’s chief of staff Andrew Mondoh, a retired Permanent Secretary who had served in the Grand Coalition Government of 2008 to 2013 overseeing the resettlement of internally displaced persons, was presented as a routine briefing.
What unfolded was a painful reckoning. Staff who had served through successive election cycles, political crises and the defining upheavals of Kenya’s post-2007 era were informed their services were no longer required.
Among those shown the door was Philip Juma, Raila’s longtime driver and a retired Kenya Prisons officer who had steered the former premier’s motorcades through the country’s most volatile political seasons for nearly two decades.
In a twist that stunned the room, Mondoh himself was caught in the same purge whose notice he had signed. He told The Star only that he had been unwell.
ODM Party Executive Director Oduor Ong’wen sought to contain the fallout.
He insisted the number of genuinely affected staff was small, putting it at seven individuals who had operated in an informal arrangement with no contractual basis after Raila’s death, running from Mondoh as chief of staff down to office cleaners.
He said those seconded from the public service remained government employees awaiting redeployment, and those on the formal ODM payroll continued to receive their salaries. “People have not been sacked,” he told reporters.
The party, he added, had grown concerned that continuing to fund the informal seven without a paper trail would invite audit queries, and had offered them a transitional payment alongside an explanation that the new party leader’s office might absorb or redeploy some.
But the picture that emerged from sources inside the Capitol Hill compound was considerably darker than Ong’wen’s account suggested.
Raila’s personal funding of staff ran well beyond any formal party or government arrangement, sustaining a third tier of aides who managed his philanthropic gestures across villages, settled medical bills for elderly supporters and childhood associates, and maintained the grassroots personal network that was as much a part of his political identity as any manifesto.
ODM politician Ben Ombima said friends of the late premier from Vihiga County whose hospital bills he quietly covered were now suffering in silence. “Raila touched many families in ways people may never fully know,” Ombima said. With that system now dismantled, the human cost of the transition is spreading across the country in ways that will not easily be measured.
At the Riverside office, Oburu’s own transition has been troubled from the outset.
His appointment of political activist Mike Agwanda as chief of staff has been received with barely concealed hostility by party veterans. Agwanda, who previously stood as an independent candidate and was a vocal critic of ODM in parts of Nyanza, is regarded by insiders as an outsider parachuted into the innermost ring of the party’s machinery.
Meanwhile, Raila’s son Raila Junior is reported to have attempted to install a new secretary and accountant at the Capitol Hill office, only for the existing accountant, a civil servant seconded by government, to refuse to hand over pending formal redeployment orders. Junior also did not respond to queries.
The property battle and the staff purge have erupted at the worst possible moment for a party already consumed by an ideological civil war.
The rival Linda Ground and Linda Mwananchi factions have hardened into what party insiders describe as the most serious internal split in ODM’s twenty-year history.
The Linda Mwananchi camp led by Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna and Embakasi East MP Babu Owino presented a ten-point scorecard of the ODM-UDA power-sharing deal with President William Ruto, which they titled “The Ten-Point Lies” and rated one out of ten on delivery, dismissing a counter-report from the Oburu-aligned side as superficial and misleading.
Oburu’s own performance in formal settings has done little to project the commanding authority the moment demands.
At a joint UDA-ODM Parliamentary Group meeting attended by President Ruto this week, he set aside a prepared speech outlining the party’s ten-point agenda and spoke without notes, leaving legislators uncertain what official messaging to carry back to their constituencies. “I said I’m not very good at reading speeches,” Oburu told the gathering.
The remark drew laughter but also unease among those expecting sharp political direction from a party already approaching a National Delegates Convention on March 27, at which fundamental questions about ODM’s leadership and its relationship with the Ruto administration are expected to come to a head.
Of those who formed the protective innermost ring around Raila, only Maurice Ogeta, the head of his security detail who was at his side in Kerala when he died on October 15, has so far landed safely.
Mombasa Governor Abdulswamad Nassir appointed Ogeta in January as the county’s Adviser on Security Affairs, citing his years of dedicated service to the party’s founding leader.
For the rest, the dismantling continues. As some staff quietly packed their private belongings and walked out of Capitol Hill on Wednesday, many understood that what was ending was not merely a job. It was an era, and it was being brought to a close not gently but with the cold finality of a padlock on a door.
Kirinyaga County Women Representative Jane Njeri Maina has lit a political firestorm inside the Democracy for the Citizens Party (DCP), publicly accusing the party’s own Deputy Leader, former Kakamega Senator Cleophas Malala, of operating as a covert agent for President William Ruto’s government while posing as a committed opposition figure.
The accusations, delivered in an incendiary post on her X account on Wednesday, have rocked a party already battered by defections and whispers of infiltration, and have thrust into the open what many DCP insiders had long suspected in private.
Maina, a close Gachagua loyalist who has stood with the former Deputy President since his turbulent impeachment in October 2024, alleged that Malala convened a secret night gathering of Kirinyaga Members of County Assembly allied to Governor Anne Waiguru, doing so between 8 pm and 10 pm on Tuesday evening at the Golden Palm hotel in Kenol, Murang’a County.
The meeting’s stated purpose, she claimed, was to recruit and organise a rival internal bloc designed to undercut Gachagua’s grassroots foot soldiers in Kirinyaga ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Most damaging was her claim about the money.
Maina alleged that Malala disbursed Ksh 20,000 to each MCA who attended, funds she said were furnished by forces intent on fracturing DCP from within.
She accused those financiers of seeking to derail what she called the “united alternative government,” a reference to the opposition coalition that Gachagua has been painstakingly constructing with Kalonzo Musyoka’s Wiper party since his removal from office.
Addressing Malala directly in language that was withering in its contempt, Maina wrote: “I do not know who you work for, nor do I want to speculate.” She reminded him of what she described as a pattern of soliciting funds from multiple political actors in exchange for favours, a practice she said he had developed while serving as UDA’s Secretary General.
“Unfortunately, it seems that you have not changed one bit,” she wrote, before issuing what amounted to a declaration of open war. “So bring it on, you shall face off with me where the rubber meets the road. In case you forgot, where I come from, we milk lions while seated on porcupines.”
The charges, even by the scorched-earth standards of Kenyan intraparty politics, carry particular weight because of the broader context in which they land. For months, Gachagua himself had been warning that Ruto’s camp had planted moles inside DCP, publicly vowing in January to eject them one by one.
“Within my team, we knew who the Ruto spies were. DCP is intact, no one is leaving,” Gachagua said at the time. He stopped short of naming Malala. On Wednesday, Maina appeared to remove any remaining ambiguity.
Malala’s trajectory inside DCP has been shadowed by suspicion almost from the start. He joined the party as Interim Deputy Leader when Gachagua unveiled DCP in Lavington in May 2025, brought in as a bridge figure whose Western Kenya profile and national name recognition could help the party escape the charge that it was purely a Mount Kenya tribal vehicle.
The two men had been bonded by a shared experience of political ejection: Malala had been ousted from UDA’s Secretary General position after he opposed Gachagua’s impeachment, and the former DP welcomed him into DCP with considerable fanfare.
But the questions began piling up. Malala missed the party’s three-day strategy retreat in Mombasa in January, his absence drawing sharp comment from delegates who found an empty chair where he should have been sitting.
He had also been conspicuously absent from a string of DCP public rallies over the preceding weeks. When political analysts began speculating openly about a possible defection back to UDA, Gachagua gave him cover, citing illness sustained after the annual Malala Super Cup football tournament in Kakamega.
“He was in Kakamega for the Super Cup, after which he fell seriously ill and asked me for permission to rest,” Gachagua told a radio interviewer in January, insisting the party was intact.
Maina’s allegations on Wednesday suggest the explanation has worn thin. Her post also hinted at prior private confrontations between herself and Malala, describing his alleged nocturnal meeting in Kenol as the moment he had “crossed the Rubicon.” The phrase signals a break that, in her view, can no longer be managed behind closed doors.
The Waiguru dimension of the affair adds a charged subplot.
The Kirinyaga Governor, who has publicly and repeatedly rejected overtures to join DCP, declared in December 2025 that, as she put it, “kwa Wamunyoro siendi,” signalling she would not align with Gachagua’s camp.
She has maintained her positioning within Ruto’s orbit, and the former DP has in turn accused most of Kirinyaga’s MCAs of having been “pocketed” by the county government, predicting they would be voted out for betraying the community.
Governor for Kirinyaga County Anne Waiguru
Waiguru dismissed those accusations as misleading, and had not responded to Maina’s latest allegations by the time of publication.
Malala had not issued any public denial on his social media platforms as of Wednesday evening, though associates quoted by political commentators suggested he had privately warned Maina to prepare for a bruising nominations battle in 2027, an implicit threat that their disagreement would follow them all the way to the ballot.
Malala’s history in Kirinyaga is not without its own ironies. It was he who chaired the Senate committee that in 2020 cleared Waiguru of an impeachment motion brought against her by the county assembly, a piece of political history that his critics within DCP now invoke to argue that his loyalties were never truly with Gachagua’s camp.
For DCP, which will spend most of 2026 attempting to expand beyond its Central Kenya stronghold and prove it can deliver results in the 2027 cycle, the timing of this eruption could not be worse.
The party already absorbed the blow of Juja MP George Koimburi’s defection in late 2025. Nyeri Governor Mutahi Kahiga has signalled a drift back toward the Ruto administration. Nakuru grassroots officials threatened to bolt in January.
Against that backdrop, a public allegation by one of the party’s most visible elected legislators that its own second-in-command is a State House plant threatens to inflict damage that no amount of denial can easily repair.
Gachagua’s office had not released any comment by the time this story went to press. Whether he will move against Malala, shield him once more, or simply allow the accusation to smoulder in the public domain may be the defining political test of his leadership as the opposition road to 2027 grows steeper and more treacherous with every passing week.
Police have arrested the personal bodyguard of Siaya Governor James Orengo and at least eight other members of his staff, detaining them in police stations across Nairobi and Siaya County on the eve of President William Ruto’s visit to the lakeside county.
Governor Orengo said his bodyguard was picked up in Nairobi at around 7.30pm on Saturday, March 7, and taken to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations headquarters.
Eight additional members of his staff, among them his communications officer, were arrested the same evening and held at various stations in Siaya County.
His personal assistant, the governor added, remains at large and is actively being sought by police, coming days after the same aide was summoned to record a statement.
Speaking to the Daily Nation by telephone, Mr Orengo said the arrests were directly connected to President Ruto’s scheduled visit to Siaya on Sunday. President Ruto was expected to attend the homecoming ceremony of Dr Ouma Oluga, the Medical Services Principal Secretary, at Uyoma in Rarieda Constituency.
“I am not sure what the government is afraid of. The President has the right to come to Siaya, but this does not give him a licence to order arbitrary arrests. The police are under strict instructions not to release them until Sunday evening, after the President’s event,” Mr Orengo said.
The governor described the conduct as an attempt to intimidate and harass his team, but vowed it would not derail what he called “our cause.” He demanded the immediate release of all those in custody, terming the arrests an egregious affront to human and constitutional rights.
“This egregious conduct on the part of the police has no place in a constitutional democracy. I demand their release. This is meant to intimidate and harass us, but it will not deter us from continuing with our cause,” he said.
The arrests also came hours before a planned Linda Mwananchi rally at Jacaranda Grounds in Nairobi, where the Orengo-led team had intended to present a parallel report on the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding signed by President Ruto and the late Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) leader Raila Odinga. The Linda Mwananchi team had separately announced plans to travel to Kaiti Constituency in Makueni County for a fundraiser and church service on Sunday.
Mr Orengo, a first-term governor and one of the most prominent rebel voices within ODM, has been a persistent critic of the broad-based government arrangement entered into by his party and the President’s United Democratic Alliance (UDA).
He has also taken aim at the elevation of Oburu Odinga as the party’s acting leader, arguing that the appointment was irregular and violated the party’s own constitutional procedures.
Babu Owino also claims he is being targeted
Babu Owino.
The arrests came as Embakasi East Member of Parliament Babu Owino also claimed on Saturday that police were moving to detain him. In a Facebook post at 6pm, Mr Owino alleged that DCI officers from Kakamega County had been dispatched for the operation, and named Interior Principal Secretary Raymond Omollo as the complainant.
“Plans to arrest me on course. I highly welcome this nonsense. Why use DCI from Kakamega County? Raymond Omollo is the complainant,” Mr Owino wrote.
Kileleshwa MCA Robert Alai, a government ally, warned on social media that the governor risked personal arrest if he continued to antagonise the state, saying police had been right to act against those he accused of orchestrating disruptions ahead of the presidential visit. He claimed that Orengo’s aides had been paying residents in Uyoma to jeer and insult the President during the Siaya visit.
The police had not issued a statement on the arrests by the time of going to press. President Ruto arrived in Siaya on Sunday morning for the Dr Oluga homecoming event at Uyoma, one of the opposition’s traditional strongholds.
The committee overseeing the implementation of the 10-point agreement between President William Ruto and the late ODM leader Raila Odinga has awarded the broad-based government an implementation score of more than 85 per cent one year after the deal was struck, clearing the way for formal coalition talks ahead of the 2027 General Election.
The score, contained in a draft report to be presented to President Ruto and new ODM leader Oburu Oginga on Saturday, the first anniversary of the March 7, 2025, Memorandum of Understanding signed at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre, is expected to accelerate the politically fraught process of cementing the UDA-ODM alliance ahead of the next polls.
Javas Bigambo, vice-chairperson of the Committee on the Oversight of the Implementation of the Ten-Point Agenda and the NADCO Report, known as COIN-10, told reporters that the panel had completed extensive audits and stakeholder consultations to arrive at the figure.
“I can authoritatively say that after extensive engagements, audit and consultations with implementing agencies, the lay of the land and panoramic view of the 10-point agenda’s implementation reveals that the status of implementation is 85 per cent or more.”
Bigambo said the milestone was significant not only as a measure of delivery but as a political lever. “The more than 85 per cent implementation status of the ten-point agenda is a door opener for confident coalition negotiations and will easily accelerate the process,” he said. “This implementation will dampen the spirit of naysayers and the opposition.”
The five-member COIN-10 team, chaired by former Nominated Senator and political scientist Dr Agnes Zani, was constituted in August 2025 jointly by Ruto and the late Raila Odinga shortly before Odinga’s death.
The panel was mandated to submit bi-monthly reports to the two principals and a final comprehensive public report on March 7, 2026, coinciding exactly with the MoU’s one-year anniversary. Members of the committee include Fatuma Ibrahim, Kevin Kiarie, Gabriel Oguda and Bigambo, with its operations funded entirely by UDA and ODM rather than the national Treasury.
The National Dialogue Committee (NADCO) chairperson, Agnes Zani, has defended the work of her committee saying there is good will from President William Ruto to implementation the report.
ANATOMY OF THE DEAL
The MoU emerged from a period of acute national tension. Youth-led protests in 2024, building on Azimio la Umoja demonstrations the previous year, had shaken the Ruto administration and exposed deep fissures over the cost of living, tax policy and governance credibility. The agreement, co-anchored in the recommendations of the National Dialogue Committee, NADCO, which was co-chaired by National Assembly Majority Leader Kimani Ichung’wah and Wiper leader Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, outlined ten reform areas covering governance, economic inclusion, electoral credibility and institutional accountability.
Among the most tangible outcomes cited in the draft report is the reconstitution of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. Parliament passed the IEBC Amendment Act, 2024, which overhauled the commission’s appointment process. A new set of commissioners was sworn in last July, and the reconstituted IEBC has since supervised by-elections and is now preparing for mass voter registration ahead of 2027. The Conflict of Interest Act, 2025, has also been signed into law, and the Social Health Authority has been rolled out to expand healthcare coverage under the SHA scheme that replaced the National Hospital Insurance Fund.
Bigambo had previously placed the implementation score at 55 per cent in November last year before rising it again to 60 per cent in February. The latest figure of over 85 per cent, he said, reflects the accelerated pace of implementation driven by the March 7 deadline pressure. He had earlier cited milestones including passage and operationalisation of the IEBC legislation, stabilisation of production costs and commodity prices, assent to the Persons with Disabilities Act, 2025, roll-out of youth empowerment programmes including NYOTA and Climate WorX, and progress on national debt restructuring.
The draft report, however, acknowledges that challenges persist. The two-thirds gender rule, enshrined in the 2010 Constitution for more than a decade but never fully enforced in Parliament, remains unimplemented. Police independence from the executive remains a concern, and the committee flags what it describes as unconstitutional legislative attempts including the National Government Constituency Development Fund Act. Compensation for victims of the 2023 and 2024 protest killings has also stalled after a court order temporarily halted the process, with ODM’s Central Management Committee in January resolving to channel payments through the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights instead.
COALITION COUNTDOWN
The report comes as the two parties move toward formalising their 2027 electoral arrangement. ODM’s Central Management Committee, chaired by Oburu Oginga, gave the party leader a mandate in January to begin coalition talks with UDA. Oginga himself has insisted that full implementation of the MoU must precede any electoral deal. “We are in the broad-based government where we have the ten-point agenda, which we want to see implemented fully before the 2027 elections,” he told journalists this week. ODM Chairperson Gladys Wanga went further, rejecting the notion of a deadline altogether. “The ten-point agenda is moving this nation forward the way it was discussed. It cannot have an end date,” she said.
A joint UDA-ODM parliamentary group meeting scheduled for Tuesday is expected to review progress on the MoU. The gathering is regarded internally as a staging ground for the formal coalition announcement, with UDA Secretary General Hassan Omar having previously declared that the broad-based government model was “what Kenyans want.”
THE DISSENTERS
Not everyone is prepared to accept the committee’s scorecard at face value. Embattled ODM Secretary-General Edwin Sifuna, who is locked in a bitter power struggle with the Oburu Oginga-led party hierarchy, has been the sharpest internal critic of the deal. In February, Sifuna accused COIN-10 of producing “absolutely zero” meaningful work in six months and gave it a 30-day ultimatum to publish a final report. He has demanded concrete delivery, not prolonged consultations. “On Saturday, we are expecting a framework of implementation, not stories,” he said on Friday.
Siaya Governor James Orengo
Sifuna’s ally, Siaya Governor James Orengo, was equally pointed. Orengo said his Linda Mwananchi group, which draws from ODM’s reform wing and allied stakeholders, had conducted its own independent assessment of MoU delivery and would present it at a rival rally at Jacaranda Grounds in Nairobi on Sunday. “We are having a meeting of chairmen of ODM across the country to look at and review the MoU and come up with a document,” Orengo said. ODM Co-Deputy Party Leader Godfrey Osotsi went further, accusing the Kenya Kwanza administration of orchestrating a deliberate cover-up of non-delivery. “The propaganda depicts Kenya Kwanza to be satisfactorily implementing the 10-point agenda reform package,” Osotsi said. “Repetitive falsehoods are designed to dissuade citizens not to read the March 7, 2025, MoU.”
Political commentator Tony Gachoka was more blunt. “The MoU signed between President Ruto and Raila Odinga was just a political gimmick devised to deceive the ODM electorate into accepting a political partnership. In my opinion, the ten-point agenda is buried in Bondo with Raila,” he said.
Kalonzo Musyoka, who co-chaired NADCO, joined the chorus of sceptics in late February. “Now we are almost in March, and the 10-point agenda signed by Raila and Ruto, nothing has happened,” the Wiper leader told congregants at a Sunday service in Utawala, Nairobi. He said he had it on the authority of Sifuna that items drawn directly from the NADCO report remained unaddressed.
ZANI’S DEFENCE
Dr Zani, in a television interview in February, defended the committee’s pace and scope of work. “We have already engaged stakeholders, some in person and others through submitted memoranda. All this is being processed,” she said. She noted that the committee had been conducting public participation forums across the country, including in county governments, civil society and religious institutions, as well as at national level. The panel had also briefed the Head of Public Service, Felix Koskei, at his Harambee House office to align ministries and state departments with the reform agenda. Zani said the committee was on track to deliver its mandate and cautioned politicians against misrepresenting its work. Bigambo echoed her, warning that the political class remained a structural threat to reform. “The political class remains a threat to full implementation because of selfish interests,” he said.
President Ruto received the committee at State House on January 21, reaffirming his personal commitment to the agenda and pledging full government support. “This process is designed to unite Kenyans through inclusive national dialogue and restore trust in public institutions by fostering transparency and accountability,” the President said. “It will translate consensus into practical reforms that strengthen democracy, improve daily life, and create opportunities for all.”
Whether a score of 85 per cent is enough to satisfy a divided ODM, a sceptical civil society and a Kenyan public that lived through the protests which necessitated the MoU in the first place, will be tested in the days ahead. The rally at Jacaranda on Sunday may offer a sharper verdict than any committee report.
Siaya Governor James Orengo has questioned the circumstances surrounding the death of former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, suggesting that the late leader did not travel to India willingly.
Speaking during a morning radio interview on Thursday, March 5, 2026, Orengo said he believed Raila was almost forced to travel with certain individuals whose actions he finds questionable.
“I said this with a heavy heart, and I must be sensitive to the feelings of the family. So I would not say as much as I think I should say. At an appropriate time, I’ll try to talk about it a little louder. But I’m saying if you look at the circumstances in which Raila was evacuated from Kenya, he didn’t go to India willingly,” Orengo said.
“I think he was almost, you know, forced to go to India and to a particular institution with a company of certain individuals who I have a lot of questions to raise about.”
Orengo went on to raise doubts about the official cause of Raila’s death.
“We don’t have a post-mortem report now. But looking at all the elements Raila had, which were in the public domain, it’s quite clear that what caused his death had nothing to do with the elements that he had. So I believe that there was some intervention. And if a proper inquiry is held and established, the truth will come out,” he said.
Experience shapes his claims
The governor drew on his past experience in high-profile cases to justify his position.
“Sometimes even when professionals tell you that this is what happened, it requires verification. Ouko, when he died, somebody suggested, and these were government people, that he committed suicide and then burnt himself. I was in the Julie Ward trial. Again, one of those murders that if one didn’t go into verification of what actually happened, it would have been dismissed,” Orengo said.
He added that the public has a right to know the truth, given Raila’s position and influence.
“The nation is being put to slumber to accept the death of Raila as natural. But I’m saying that we need to look into it. There is a public interest, by virtue of his position,” he said.
Orengo has previously expressed concerns that after Raila’s death, efforts are being made to weaken the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). On February 21, 2026, speaking at a Linda Mwananchi rally in Kakamega, he said:
“Kifo ya Raila Odinga wameua Raila Odinga, sasa wanataka kuua chama cha Raila.”
Meru politics has taken a new turn after former Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mithika Linturi claimed he helped raise Ksh100 million to influence the Senate during the impeachment of former Meru Governor Kawira Mwangaza.
Speaking in a night interview on a local TV station on Sunday, March 1, 2026, Linturi said he mobilised the money from friends, Members of Parliament and other allies. He said they wanted to respond to what they believed was financial influence within Parliament.
“I called friends, my friends, MPs, all of them, and raised money: Ksh100 million,” Linturi said.
Money and impeachment claims
The interviewer asked him directly what the money was for, and Linturi linked it to impeachment politics at the national level and in Meru. He referred to remarks previously made by President William Ruto about MPs.
“Let me ask you, you heard Ruto say these MPs ni wakora. They are always paid money. They took money to impeach Gachagua. So even we gave out the money to be taken to the Senate,” Linturi said.
When pressed on whether they paid senators to impeach Mwangaza, he did not deny it. Instead, he described Parliament as compromised.
“I’m telling you that that parliament is compromised. It’s for the highest bidder. Even if you have some kind of case there, you will be asked to give something. And we decided if it’s money which might cause this thing to continue, let’s contribute. And I thank those people who came out,” he said.
Former Meru Governor Kawira Mwangaza.
Mwangaza’s removal followed a long political battle. The Meru County Assembly impeached her for the third time on August 8, 2024, after two earlier failed attempts. The Senate heard the case from August 19, 2024, and upheld the impeachment on August 21, 2024. That decision removed her from office, although she challenged it in court.
In March 2025, the High Court upheld the Senate’s decision, bringing her term to an end. Her deputy, Isaac Mutuma, then took over as governor.
A quiet but consequential filing at the Office of the Registrar of Political Parties has thrown Edwin Sifuna’s Linda Mwananchi movement into fresh turmoil, with an application to register the mass opposition formation as a fully-fledged political party now under official review — even as the faction’s own founders insist they have made no such decision.
The application, lodged last week at the ORPP by one Charles Wanyonyi, has set off a storm of speculation across Kenya’s fractured opposition landscape. Three theories are now circulating with equal ferocity: that it is a contingency move by the Sifuna camp to create a political exit ramp; that rivals within ODM or the broader Kenya Kwanza administration are attempting a hostile takeover of the potent brand; or that a political entrepreneur has moved swiftly to monetise a name that has captured the national imagination.
Wanyonyi was guarded but did not deny the filing. “It is true I have made the reservation, but I cannot comment on the matter at the moment because it is still under review by the Registrar of Political Parties,” he told Nation. “Until it is approved, we can wait.”
The ORPP confirmed the application was under review. Registrar John Cox Lorionokou said the process is governed by Section 4B of the Political Parties Act, which gives the office 14 days to conclude its review. A provisional certificate is only issued upon compliance with Sections 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 of the Act. An ORPP official further clarified that names are assessed strictly against Section 8 of the Political Parties Act. “If it meets the parameters, it is approved; if it does not meet them, it is rejected,” the official said.
“In Kenyan politics, branding is power. Lock someone out of a name and you complicate their logistics, messaging and legal standing.”
Senior opposition insider, speaking off the record
SIFUNA CAMP DENIES ANY ROLE
Senior figures inside the Linda Mwananchi movement were categorical that the group has not taken any collective decision to register as a political party. Vihiga Senator Godfrey Osotsi, co-deputy party leader of ODM and one of the movement’s founders, was unequivocal. “As a team we have not discussed anything of that nature because we have not reached that stage,” he said. “We are determined to resolve the issues in ODM party and that is our priority.”
Saboti MP Caleb Amisi appeared genuinely caught off guard when The Star put the application to him. “Hii sasa ni nini?” he posed rhetorically. “Ingekuwa renaissance maybe tungeongea. We have not discussed registration of Linda Mwananchi as a political party,” he said.
Nairobi Senator Sifuna himself did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the filing. Yet privately, observers say the mere existence of the application speaks volumes about the calculus being run by multiple camps. Sifuna’s battle to retain his position as ODM Secretary General is simultaneously playing out at the Political Parties Disputes Tribunal, which issued a temporary stay halting his removal following a National Executive Committee meeting in Mombasa. Should that legal shield fail, a registered political vehicle would provide an immediate alternative.
THE HOSTILE TAKEOVER THEORY
Babu Owino
Embakasi East MP Babu Owino was blunt about who he suspects is behind the move. “They are desperate people but they shall be defeated. This movement is bigger than just a name. They have taken the letter of the law but the spirit of the law is still with the people. The movement is not in the name,” he said.
His remarks pointed suspicion squarely at political adversaries, whether within ODM’s mainstream, the ruling Kenya Kwanza coalition, or within factions of the United Alternative Government. Former Jubilee Party Secretary General Jeremiah Kioni was more direct, linking the application to State House. “Given the panicky nature of the regime in office and their inability to fulfil or deliver on any of their promises, that naturally is my immediate line of thought. It is the government dark force at work,” he said.
A senior opposition insider, speaking off the record, warned that control of a political party name carries real logistical and legal consequences. “In Kenyan politics, branding is power. Lock someone out of a name and you complicate their logistics, messaging and legal standing,” the insider said. ODM National Chairperson Gladys Wanga used the development to press the Linda Mwananchi faction to come clean on its true intentions, noting that recent rallies had conspicuously dropped ODM symbolism. “They should come out clear on their real intentions in light of this application to form a new political party,” she said.
THE MUGAMBI IMANYARA GAMBLE
The third theory draws a direct historical parallel. In 2005, lawyer and politician Mugambi Imanyara famously registered the Orange Democratic Movement name ahead of the constitutional referendum, later negotiating a transfer of the brand to its political owners. Legal experts point out that Kenyan law does not require an applicant to demonstrate ideological ownership at the reservation stage. Only statutory compliance with the Political Parties Act is assessed. Should the name be approved and Linda Mwananchi later seek formal adoption of it, political or financial negotiations would be inevitable.
Political analyst Chris Omore said the movement’s rapid national growth may have forced the question of institutionalisation. “When a movement begins to command national visibility and numbers, the question of structure inevitably arises. Registering a party can be both a bargaining chip and an insurance policy,” he said. He added that a purely commercial motive was equally plausible. “This could simply be someone betting that the name will gain even more traction and positioning themselves accordingly. It would not be unprecedented,” Omore said.
FROM GRASSROOTS CRY TO NATIONAL FORCE
Linda Mwananchi, loosely translated as “Protect the Citizen”, has undergone a dramatic transformation since it first emerged as a dissenting voice inside ODM following the formation of the broad-based government. What began as internal party opposition to rapprochement between ODM and President William Ruto’s United Democratic Alliance has evolved into a movement drawing massive crowds across Nairobi, Western Kenya and parts of the Rift Valley.
The movement’s most dramatic moment came on February 15, 2026 in Kitengela, Kajiado County, when police dispersed a Linda Mwananchi rally and a youth, Vincent Ayomo, was shot dead. Rather than dampening the faction’s energy, the event appeared to intensify it, with subsequent rallies in Kakamega and other counties drawing comparable crowds. The Sifuna camp has accused security agencies of acting at the behest of political enemies.
The movement’s key figures span a wide political spectrum. Siaya Governor James Orengo, a Senior Counsel whose activism dates to Kenya’s struggle against single-party rule in the 1980s, provides historical gravitas. Babu Owino brings confrontational energy honed through student activism. Senator Osotsi offers technical expertise as a former star witness in the 2017 presidential election petition. Together, they have sought to frame Linda Mwananchi as a generational and ideological cause rather than a factional dispute.
In a separate but related development, a party called the People’s Renaissance Movement, which has been linked to the Sifuna circle, received a provisional registration certificate from the ORPP on January 15, 2026. Its slogan is “the change we need” and its officials have actively courted Gen Z voters to register as members. The emergence of that party alongside the Linda Mwananchi name application suggests that the infrastructure for a formal political breakaway is being assembled, whether or not individual leaders are willing to say so publicly.
THE 2027 ARITHMETIC
The political stakes behind the name battle are considerable. The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission projects that youth will account for nearly 70 per cent of voters in 2027. A recent study by OdipoDev and Tribeless Youth suggests seven out of ten Gen Z voters intend to participate in the next election. President Ruto won in 2022 with 7.17 million votes out of 14.3 million cast. Any movement capable of mobilising a significant portion of that youth bloc becomes a decisive force in the electoral arithmetic.
Should Linda Mwananchi formalise into a standalone party and field candidates, it risks fracturing the anti-Ruto vote and potentially handing the incumbent a clearer path to re-election. That risk has not been lost on the United Alternative Government coalition, which groups Rigathi Gachagua’s Democracy for Citizens Party, Kalonzo Musyoka’s Wiper and Fred Matiang’i’s Jubilee. Sifuna himself has signalled openness to working with that formation, insisting that unseating Ruto demands unity. “We must beat William Ruto by at least 5 million votes to make it clear that we are tired of his administration. We must be one force against William Ruto,” he has said.
Multimedia University’s Prof Gitile Naituli cautioned that public rallies by rival camps risk exposing divisions they seek to conceal. “If rival camps use rallies to signal individual ambitions, the events could expose the very divisions they seek to conceal,” he said.
The ORPP’s 14-day review clock is now running. Whatever the outcome of the name reservation process, the application has already achieved one thing: it has forced Linda Mwananchi’s leaders to answer a question they have so far been able to defer. The movement that began as an internal ODM pressure group must now decide whether it will remain a faction within an increasingly hostile party structure, join the United Alternative Government coalition, or cross the Rubicon and become a party of its own.
NYANDARUA, Kenya — He sat inside a presidential suite in Kisumu for over five hours, speaking freely to a man he trusted, certain their conversation was private.
He was wrong. And according to Rigathi Gachagua, that night of betrayal at the Acacia Premier Hotel on August 28, 2024, set in motion a chain of events that would end not only his deputy presidency, but ultimately the life of the man who shared that room with him.
In the most explosive political allegation yet to emerge from the wreckage of Friday’s fatal helicopter crash in Nandi County, the former Deputy President on Sunday directly linked the death of Emurua Dikirr MP Johana Ng’eno to National Intelligence Service surveillance and a campaign of political intimidation he says was personally directed by President William Ruto.
Speaking at an AIPCA church service in Nyandarua North on March 1, 2026 — barely 24 hours after Ng’eno and five others perished when their Eurocopter AS350 went down in flames in the forests of Mosop — Gachagua demanded that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the UK’s Scotland Yard take over the probe, insisting Kenyan institutions are too compromised to deliver the truth.
“He came to me in Kisumu, and we talked,” Gachagua told the gathering, his voice cracking with emotion. “Immediately after, the recording was taken to the President, and he was thoroughly intimidated.”
THE NIGHT THE PRESIDENCY BROKE
The story of what happened inside that hotel room has stalked Kenyan politics for the better part of 18 months. The Nation — which first broke the story of the bugged room in 2024 — was unable at the time to name the mystery MP for legal reasons, after the legislator failed to respond to queries. That legal shield lifted on Saturday with Ng’eno’s death. He will now take to his grave the full substance of what was said.
Multiple sources within Gachagua’s inner circle at the time confirmed to the Nation that on the night of August 28, 2024, the then Deputy President spent over five hours in his hotel room with Ng’eno.
The purpose of the meeting was not initially a matter of concern — Ng’eno had established himself as one of Gachagua’s most vocal defenders in the Rift Valley, having pushed back loudly when the impeachment plot was first floated in July.
He had also beaten the president’s preferred candidate in his own constituency, making him a man of independent political standing.
What neither man apparently knew was that their conversation was being captured.
According to Gachagua’s account and sources familiar with the events, the hotel room had been bugged by NIS operatives despite a routine debugging sweep by an advance security team the previous day. A trusted aide had specifically asked the advance team leader to confirm the room had been screened. The assurance was given. It proved false.
Rigathi Gachagua
The contents of the tapes were described by a senior government official as so damaging that when President Ruto shared their existence with religious leaders who visited State House in a last-ditch attempt to broker a truce before the impeachment, the mediation effort effectively collapsed.
Nyeri Governor Mutahi Kahiga confirmed that such a delegation had met the president. GEMA chairman Bishop Lawi Imathiu, who was part of the grouping, subsequently said a follow-up meeting to specifically address the impeachment had been sought but never granted.
The fallout was swift and brutal. Within days of the Kisumu tour, the helicopter carrying Gachagua to Kirinyaga County was recalled to Nairobi moments after it landed, forcing the deputy president’s entourage to seek alternative transport. The impeachment machinery accelerated. On October 8, 2024, the National Assembly voted to remove Gachagua. The Senate confirmed the charges ten days later.
‘HE CAME AT 2 A.M., CRYING’
What Gachagua revealed on Sunday about Ng’eno’s personal ordeal during those weeks is perhaps the most disturbing element of an already disturbing story.
He told the congregation that the MP appeared at his door at two in the morning in tears, carrying threatening messages he said had been sent directly by President Ruto, pressuring him to support the impeachment motion.
“I told him the die was cast — even if he did not sign, it would change nothing. Instead of endangering you and your life, and your family, just go ahead and sign. He signed with a lot of tears,” Gachagua said.
The claim is lent credibility by what Ng’eno himself publicly described in a June 2025 radio interview on Hot 96. In that chilling account, the MP said he was abducted from his constituency, driven through Sotik, Nyamira, and Kisii, and eventually taken into a forested area with his hands bound to the rails of a Land Cruiser.
He said the operation began at a police station where he was held from morning until 10 p.m., after which an unidentified team arrived and removed him under cover of darkness. He died without ever publicly identifying those responsible.
Gachagua on Sunday also recalled earlier allegations he made in 2024 that the same Kisumu hotel visit had been the occasion of an attempted poisoning, marking what he described as the first of two assassination attempts against him.
A second, he claimed, occurred in Nyeri on September 30 of that year. So alarmed was he that he subsequently dismissed the entire security detail assigned to him by the state, saying he no longer trusted the protection apparatus. The Directorate of Criminal Investigations later summoned him over those claims.
SIX LIVES LOST IN MOSOP INFERNO
The crash that has reignited these allegations occurred on the afternoon of February 28, 2026. The Eurocopter AS350 registered 5Y-DSB, operated by Royal Media Services, departed Endebess at approximately 4:30 p.m. bound for Mosoriot. It never arrived. The aircraft went down in the forested Chepkiep area of Mosop Sub-county in Nandi County, bursting into flames on impact near Chepkieb Primary School. The wreckage was discovered amid heavy rainfall.
A scene where a chopper crashed at Chepkiep Village in Mosop Sub-County of Nandi County on February 28, 2026, where six occupants died on the spot.
All six on board perished: Ng’eno himself, 54, serving his third term as Emurua Dikirr MP and chairman of the Departmental Committee on Housing, Urban Planning, and Public Works; pilot George Were, who was reported to be months away from retirement; Kenya Forest Service ranger Amos Kipngetich Rotich; the MP’s cameraman Nick Kosgey; teacher Robert Kipkoech Keter; and Narok County protocol officer Wycliffe Kiprotich Rono. The bodies were so severely charred that Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital initially struggled to make identifications.
The Kenya Civil Aviation Authority has activated its Aircraft Accident Investigation Department. Initial indicators from police on the ground point to adverse weather as a contributing factor. Gachagua dismissed these preliminary conclusions. He demanded that Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen step aside from any oversight role during the probe, stating that neither the family, the Kipsigis community, nor Kenyans at large could expect a fair investigation with Murkomen in place. Murkomen had himself issued a public tribute to Ng’eno following the crash, describing him as a dedicated leader.
THE GHOST OF KIPKALYA KONES
For the Kipsigis community, Gachagua’s allegations carry a weight that goes beyond party politics. In drawing a parallel to the 2008 helicopter crash that killed former Roads Minister Kipkalya Kones — another towering Kipsigis figure whose death was never conclusively explained to public satisfaction — he was reaching into a wound that has never fully healed.
The implication was unmistakable: that this community has a habit of losing its most prominent sons in aircraft accidents that convenient circumstances never quite explain.
Flanking Gachagua at Sunday’s church service was a formidable roster of opposition figures: Kalonzo Musyoka, former Chief Justice Justin Muturi, ex-Interior CS Fred Matiang’i, and Eugene Wamalwa. All echoed his call for an international independent probe.
Their collective presence served a political purpose as much as a pastoral one — transforming a memorial into a declaration that the opposition views the crash through a lens of power, not weather.
National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetang’ula formally notified Parliament of Ng’eno’s death. Mumias East MP Peter Salasya captured the fallen MP’s final mission in a tribute that resonated widely: “RIP Hon. Ng’eno. You went out to stand with flood victims — a true servant leader till the very end.” President Ruto himself described the late MP as “focused, vocal, and fearless.” That the man Gachagua accuses of ordering surveillance and intimidation against Ng’eno offered such a tribute went quietly unremarked upon by the opposition.
GOVERNMENT SILENT, TENSIONS RISE
State House and the National Intelligence Service had not responded to Gachagua’s latest allegations by the time of publication. The silence is itself a political statement in a country where what is not said often speaks most loudly.
Social media reaction has been predictably polarised. A video of Gachagua’s speech circulating on social media, with some dismissing the former deputy president as a destabiliser and others demanding accountability.
One response reflected the raw emotion coursing through parts of the Rift Valley: “How many people will die so that he holds on to power?” — a question that could, depending on one’s reading of events, be aimed at more than one man.
What is certain is this: with Ng’eno gone, the full substance of what was said in that Kisumu hotel room on the night of August 28, 2024 — the conversation that multiple sources say broke the Ruto-Gachagua relationship beyond repair — dies with him. Three parties know what was said that night: President Ruto, Rigathi Gachagua, and the shadowy intelligence figures who were listening through the wall. None of them are likely to speak fully and freely.
The Aircraft Accident Investigation Department has opened its file on the Mosop crash. Whether that investigation will satisfy the questions now swirling around it is another matter entirely.
For the Kipsigis, for the opposition, and for a Kenyan public increasingly attuned to the lethal consequences of proximity to power, a weather report will not be enough.
The body of Emurua Dikirr MP Johana Ng’eno is loaded onto a plane at Eldoret International Airport in Uasin Gishu County, and taken to Nairobi on March 01, 2026, after the legislator and five other people died in a chopper crash at Chepkiep Village in Mosop Sub-County of Nandi County on Saturday. Four bodies were also flown to Nairobi while that of the pilot was taken to western region.
FOR nearly two decades, former Vice President Moody Awori has served, led, and sacrificed for this nation. But today, at 91 years of age, Kenya Insights can reveal that the country has repaid that service with a staggering act of institutional negligence: not a single shilling in pension has ever been paid to the man who served as Kenya’s second in command under the late President Mwai Kibaki.
The explosive disclosure was made on Wednesday by State House Comptroller Katoo Ole Metito while appearing before the National Assembly’s Administration and Internal Security Committee. In a bombshell testimony that left MPs visibly unsettled, Ole Metito lifted the lid on a bitter standoff between his office and the National Treasury that has left Awori without a cent of his legally guaranteed retirement benefits since he stepped down from office in January 2008.
“Mr Awori has never received any pension,” the Comptroller told the stunned committee, tabling a bundle of unanswered letters he had written to the National Treasury requesting budgetary allocations for the former VP’s pension. “We have written letters to the National Treasury to allocate the amounts as required by the law, but we have not received any response from them. I don’t know why there is a delay.”
“Mr Awori has never received any pension. I don’t know why there is a delay.”
Awori, who turns 92 later this year and is one of Kenya’s most decorated public servants, led the country as Vice President and Minister of Home Affairs from September 2003 until January 2008, when President Kibaki named Kalonzo Musyoka as his successor following the disputed general election of December 2007. In a striking personal comparison, Ole Metito told the committee he himself had been receiving his parliamentary pension without fail ever since he retired from the National Assembly, where he served as the Member of Parliament for Kajiado South from 2003 until 2022. His pension, he noted wryly, arrives in his account even before his State House salary does.
Under the Retirement Benefits (Deputy President and Designated State Officers) Act, a retired Vice President is entitled to a monthly pension equivalent to 80 percent of their last monthly salary while in office.
They are also entitled to a lump sum payment on retirement equivalent to one year’s salary for each term served, two saloon vehicles and one four-wheel drive vehicle to be replaced every four years, a fuel allowance of 15 percent of the current monthly salary of the sitting Deputy President, and full medical cover including overseas treatment for the entitled person, their spouse, and dependent children.
Beyond financial benefits, the law also provides retired Vice Presidents with a full complement of staff including two drivers, one personal assistant, one accountant, one secretary, two housekeepers, two senior support staff, two cooks, two gardeners, two cleaners, and armed security guards on request. Diplomatic passports for the entitled person and their spouse, access to the VIP lounge at all airports in Kenya, and a fully equipped office with maintenance expenses round out the package.
Ole Metito clarified that while State House has uploaded Awori’s details to the Social Health Authority (SHA) and has provided government vehicles that are regularly serviced, the critical monthly pension and the lump sum retirement package have been withheld entirely due to the Treasury’s failure to respond to State House’s budget requests.
State House Comptroller Katoo Ole Metito when he appeared before the National Committee on Administration and Internal Security at the County Hall Nairobi on Wednesday, May 14, 2025 to review and consider FY 2025/2026 budget estimates.| NATION
SAITOTI WIDOW ALSO LEFT HANGING
The pension scandal does not end with Awori. Ole Metito also told the committee that the widow of the late former Vice President George Saitoti, who died in a helicopter crash in June 2012, has similarly not been receiving her legally mandated spousal benefits. Under the same Act, the surviving spouse of a deceased entitled person is entitled to 50 percent of the pension that would have been payable to the former VP.
Saitoti, who served as Vice President under President Daniel arap Moi from 1989 to 1997 and again from 1999 to 2002, died alongside five others when a police helicopter he was travelling in went down in the Ngong Hills. It has been almost fourteen years since his death, and his widow has been fighting the same bureaucratic wall as Awori himself.
The revelations place the National Treasury in an acutely embarrassing position. The same government that has been embroiled in controversies over lavish spending and perks for current officials has apparently allowed one of the country’s oldest living statesmen to reach his tenth decade without the state honouring its legal obligations to him. Requests for comment from the National Treasury had not been responded to by the time of going to press.
A LIFE OF SERVICE UNREWARDED
Moody Awori’s life of public service is long and distinguished. First elected as the Member of Parliament for Funyula Constituency in Busia District in 1983, he broke ranks with the ruling KANU party in 2002 to join the National Rainbow Coalition that swept Mwai Kibaki to power. He served as Chairman of NARC’s top decision-making organ before being appointed Minister of Home Affairs in January 2003 and elevated to the Vice Presidency just eight months later in September of that year.
He is also the founder and former chairman of the Association for the Physically Disabled of Kenya, and holds an honorary doctorate from the Southern New Hampshire University in recognition of his decades of work for the disadvantaged. The Kenyan Government has decorated him with two high-level state awards, including the Elder of the Burning Spear.
The committee is expected to summon the National Treasury to account for the delay. Members of Parliament expressed outrage at the revelation and demanded that Ole Metito provide a detailed dossier of all correspondence exchanged between State House and the Treasury on the matter. It remains to be seen whether Awori will live to see the state honour its obligations to him.
KISUMU/SIAYA, February 26, 2026 — James Orengo has cracked the whip on a county officer who publicly accused him of excessive chang’aa drinking and plunged into a no-holds-barred political tirade at a rival ODM faction rally.
The County Government of Siaya has suspended Richard Omondi Odhiambo, popularly known as Makamu Wa Makamu, from his position as County Information Management Officer over what it termed unsavoury, derogatory and disrespectful remarks directed at the governor.
In a suspension letter dated February 25 and signed by Chief Officer for Governance, Administration and ICT Walter Okello, the county cited gross misconduct, insubordination and breaches of the Public Officer Ethics Act, the Public Service Disciplinary Manual and the Employment Act.
Omondi has been ordered to immediately hand over county property and explain within seven days why further disciplinary action, including dismissal, should not be taken against him.
The explosive incident unfolded on February 25 at a Linda Ground faction rally in Kisumu East’s Ragumo area.
Omondi, a vocal grassroots mobiliser who has built a reputation for his fiery Dholuo speeches, mounted the podium and launched into an attack that quickly spread across social media platforms.
In one widely circulated clip, he is heard declaring in Dholuo that what is troubling Governor Orengo is too much chang’aa. The remarks drew gasps from sections of the crowd and ignited a political storm within hours.
Witnesses and online users also pointed to other parts of his address in which he criticised senior ODM figures, including Secretary General Edwin Sifuna and Embakasi East MP Babu Owino.
In the charged speech, he allegedly accused some leaders of marrying outside the Luo community and claimed such unions had stalled development in Luo strongholds, comments that many observers described as divisive and inflammatory.
The rally was organised by the Linda Ground faction associated with Oburu Oginga and Gladys Wanga.
The faction is positioning itself as the defender of ODM’s traditional support base ahead of the 2027 General Election.
The parallel Linda Mwananchi mobilisation, linked to Sifuna and Babu Owino and recently attended by Governor Orengo at events in western Kenya, has exposed deep cracks within the Orange party’s Nyanza bastion.
Siaya Governor James Orengo
Omondi’s presence at a rival faction event while serving in the Siaya county administration was widely interpreted as a brazen act of political defiance.
Online reactions were swift and sharply divided.
Supporters of the governor praised the suspension as decisive leadership, arguing that public officers must uphold decorum and neutrality.
Critics countered that the county had long embraced Omondi’s streetwise mobilisation style and questioned why his political theatrics were tolerated until they turned against his boss.
Omondi, a trained plumber from the Kisumu Ugunja corridor who rose from the Manyatta area to become a sought-after rally speaker, previously campaigned for Orengo during past political contests.
His appointment to an ICT-related county role had in the past triggered murmurs among residents who viewed him primarily as a political mobiliser rather than a technocrat.
The suspension letter specifically references the February 25 Kisumu rally and cites violations including Section 16 of the Public Officer Ethics Act and provisions of the Public Service Human Resource Policies.
By Wednesday morning, Omondi had not issued a formal statement.
Allies on social media described the suspension as political persecution and hinted at a looming showdown that could escalate the already simmering factional rivalry.
Governor Orengo’s office had not released a separate statement by press time.
The swift disciplinary action, however, signals a zero tolerance approach to internal dissent that spills into personal attacks, particularly as ODM factions jostle for dominance in the run up to 2027.
With the seven day show cause window now ticking, the embattled officer faces a stark choice: mount a formal defence within the public service framework or transform the disciplinary process into yet another combustible political spectacle in Nyanza’s intensifying succession wars.
A reshuffle in key parliamentary committees has seen several Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) members removed from their plum assignments, sparking protests from MPs who claim the changes are politically motivated.
House leadership has defended the adjustments as part of a broader effort to redistribute committee positions in line with party affiliations.
However, affected legislators described the moves as a deliberate attempt to weaken opposition voices in strategic oversight committees.
Among those affected is Suba South MP Caroli Omondi, who has been removed as chairperson of the Constitution Implementation Oversight Committee (CIOC) and reassigned to the less influential Sports and Culture Committee.
Kitutu Chache MP Antony Kibagendi, currently suspended indefinitely from the House, has been removed from the powerful Public Investments Committee on Governance and Education and placed in the CIOC. He will be replaced by newly elected Kasipul MP Boyd Were Ong’ondo, son of the late Kasipul MP Charles Ong’ondo Were.
Omondi protested the reshuffle, accusing Majority Leader Kimani Ichung’wah and his Minority counterpart Junet Mohamed of targeting him.
“They don’t want me to chair CIOC because they know I’m going to oversee elections. That’s why they don’t want me to be in that committee,” he said.
He added that he had not received any letter from Minority Whip Millie Odhiambo discharging him from the committee.
“This is a conspiracy between the Majority and Minority leaders,” Omondi said.
The legislator has been vocal in opposition politics and was recently appointed Secretary General of Azimio La Umoja. He is also aligned with the Linda Mwananchi faction of ODM linked to Senator Edwin Sifuna.
“He will leave that committee because it should be chaired by a majority side. We are a House that respects political parties. I have already engaged him, and he knows what to do,” Ichung’wah said last week.
Junet explained that the Selection Committee had reviewed committee compositions following the recent by-elections.
“When you are being discharged, you are not being taken to a departmental committee. The selection committee sat down, re-looked and made the changes. But the one Mr Caroli is talking about, of being discharged…it’s coming,” he said.
“I am serving a warning. Anyone who will not adhere to the party position will relinquish their committee positions to lesser ones, so that they know that it is parties which reward people to positions.”
Other reshuffle changes include newly elected Ugunja MP Moses Omondi replacing Butere MP Tindi Mwale as chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee; Mbeere North MP Leo Wamuthende taking over from West Pokot Woman Representative Rael Chepkemoi on the National Cohesion and Equal Opportunities Committee; and Juja MP George Koimburi moving from Parliamentary Broadcasting and Library to National Cohesion and Equal Opportunities, replacing Nakuru Woman Representative Liza Chelule.
Malava MP David Ndakwa will also serve on the committee, replacing the late nominated MP Joseph Hamisi Denar.
Meanwhile, new Magarini MP Harrison Kombe replaces Budalangi MP Raphael Wanjala as chairperson of the Implementation Committee.
Kisumu Woman Representative Ruth Odinga has been moved from the Agriculture Committee to the less influential Members’ Services and Facilities Committee.
Several allies of former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, including Naivasha MP Jayne Kihara, were also reassigned to less prominent committees.
Conversely, MPs who returned to UDA regained influential positions. Githunguri MP Gathoni Wamuchomba has returned to the CIOC from the Members’ Services and Facilities Committee.
Marakwet West MP Timothy Kipchumba, an advocate of the High Court, joins the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee and the Regional Integration Committee, replacing previous members, including Kesses MP Julius Rutto. Juja MP George Koimburi was also handed two powerful committee assignments.
Nairobi Woman Representative Esther Passaris has stirred fresh turbulence within the Orange Democratic Movement after alleging that Embakasi East MP Babu Owino angrily banged a table in front of the late party leader Raila Odinga when he missed out on the powerful Public Accounts Committee chairmanship.
Speaking during a live interview on Radio 47’s Breakfast 47 programme on Tuesday, Passaris claimed the incident occurred after internal parliamentary negotiations denied Mr Owino the PAC seat, a position traditionally reserved for the opposition and regarded as one of the most influential oversight roles in the National Assembly.
“Babu Owino aligongea Raila Odinga meza baada ya kunyimwa the PAC chairmanship,” she said, alleging that the MP also sent strongly worded messages to the veteran opposition leader. “Ndiyo maana hata siku za mwisho za Raila, Babu Owino hakuwa anaonekana kwa meetings za ODM.”
Raila Odinga.
Her remarks, delivered in a measured but pointed tone, have reopened debate about simmering succession battles within ODM following Mr Odinga’s death.
The party, which for decades revolved around Mr Odinga’s authority, has been grappling with internal realignments as younger leaders seek to consolidate influence.
When pressed during the interview on whether she personally witnessed the alleged confrontation, Passaris described the episode as widely known within party ranks and referred to what she termed text exchanges between Mr Owino and Mr Odinga.
The Public Accounts Committee has historically been a strategic perch for opposition politics.
Its chairperson scrutinises government spending and tables reports that often shape national accountability debates.
In past parliaments, ODM has fought fiercely to retain control of the committee, seeing it as a lever against the Executive.
Mr Owino has previously voiced frustration over what he considers systematic sidelining in party and parliamentary appointments despite his high-profile mobilisation for ODM during the 2017 and 2022 campaigns.
He has publicly declared his interest in holding senior leadership roles, arguing that generational change within the party is inevitable.
Kileleshwa MCA Robert Alai weighed in shortly after Passaris’ remarks circulated online, posting on X that Mr Odinga “died cursing Babu” and dismissing the notion that Mr Owino is the natural successor to the former premier.
The post intensified an already heated online exchange among ODM supporters.
Political analysts say the timing of the accusations is significant.
With ODM navigating its place within the evolving “broad-based” government arrangement and recalibrating its opposition strategy, any suggestion of past disrespect towards Mr Odinga carries heavy symbolic weight among the party’s grassroots base.
Mr Owino has not issued a public response to the claims.
The clip from Radio 47 has since gone viral, drawing thousands of reactions and exposing deep divisions among ODM loyalists.
Some have demanded evidence to substantiate the allegations, while others argue that internal disputes should be resolved within party organs rather than through media exchanges.
For a party built on Mr Odinga’s towering political persona, the unfolding spat underscores the fragile transition from personality-driven politics to a contested post-Raila era. Whether the latest claims harden factional lines or force a public reconciliation remains to be seen.
