Riggy G's anger and outbursts about Ruto dalliance with Baba

Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua during a church service at PEFA Church Kiamariga, Nyeri County. [DPSC, Standard]

Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua aka Riggy G is breathing fire from his mountainous backyard. The second in command has not been sitting pretty.

Observers have noticed a systematic waning of rapprochement between the DP and his boss, President William Ruto, over the last one year. Pundits opine that the strained relationship between the two bigwigs has been occasioned by a myriad of factors, including unmet expectations and differences in approach to national issues.

But first, a walk down memory lane should suffice to unravel some of the controversies that are astounding Kenyans. In the run-up to the 2022 elections, the Gikuyu communityrejected President Uhuru Kenyatta’s choice of successor, Raila Odinga, and instead embraced Ruto.

On August 9, 2022, the region kept its word, and overwhelmingly voted for Ruto.

It was no lesser personage than the Narc Kenya party leader, Martha Karua, who revealed that back in 1969 while she was in Class Six, she went back home from school and found her village in a pensive mood following an order for all adults from the community to go to Mzee Kenyatta’s Gatundu home to participate in a series of oaths.

Upon further inquiry, she learnt that the oaths were meant to achieve two objectives. First, that leadership must never cross River Chania. In other words, the presidency must never leave Kiambu. Secondly, leadership must never go to the Luo community. Although the first condition has since been broken when Mwai Kibaki from Nyeri became Kenya’s third president, every effort has been made to enforce the second one.

Historians have recorded that it was Jaramogi Oginga Odinga who stood firm against the British scheme to allow independence before Kenyatta’s release from detention. By putting aside his own political ambition to facilitate Mzee Kenyatta’s ascension to premiership and subsequently to the presidency, Jaramogi showed rare magnanimity.

A few years into independence, however, it was the same Kenyatta and his cabal of Kiambu mafia who pushed Jaramogi out of the Vice Presidency, and detained him.

In 2007, Raila’s presidency was grabbed from him by President Mwai Kibaki through the barrel of gun. These events were not isolated, but properly designed and executed to ensure that the second object of the Gatundu oaths was observed. The unlikely love between the community and Ruto in 2022 was therefore, a camouflage for something much broader, that is very well established.

When President Ruto’s first cabinet was unveiled, the Mount Kenya communities got eight Cabinet Secretary positions in addition to the Deputy President and Attorney General. Surprisingly, the region felt short-changed.

Riggy G justified the community’s demand for half of the cabinet on the basis of the strength of the presidential vote that Ruto received from them. Strange as it might be, he argued that government positions must be doled out based on “shareholding”, a concept that rubbed Kenyans the wrong way.

Then came the issue of trying to balance senior government positions among all Kenyans. Rationalizing senior government positions would inevitably mean retiring some of these people from the Mount Kenya communities, a fact that was misconstrued as targeting the region for removing from the public service.  As the President, Ruto has the responsibility to hold the country together, and there is no better way of pacifying communities than by appointing some of their members to senior government positions.

The President thus softened his stance towards Raila, and the two started engaging in some cautious dalliance. The DP interpreted the thawing of relations between Ruto and Raila as a signal that he was replaceable. After all, it was not long ago when President Uhuru used the same Raila to make the then Deputy President, William Ruto, irrelevant in the government. Riggy was watching history repeat itself before his very eyes.

The last straw that broke the camel’s back was the Gen-Z uprising and the events that followed. When the Gen-Zs and their supporters appeared hell-bent on causing anarchy and pushing the country to the precipice, it took Raila’s statesmanship to remind Kenyans that there was no room for regime change through extra-constitutional means.

When the President reconstituted his government, four members of Raila’s ODM party were handed Cabinet Secretary slots. The appointments reverberated across the country, with the Mount Kenya region interpreting it as the most clear signal yet that President Ruto was planning to go into a formal partnership with Raila in readiness for the 2027 polls. The fact of the matter, however, is that Raila is not part of President Ruto’s government.

The bare-knuckles approach that Riggy G has adopted is a fight back in response to what the region sees as spiteful behavior by the president that they supported with their votes. Unwittingly, the Deputy President has now put the country into an elections mood, and it is going to be very difficult for the government to be focused on its 2022 campaign promises unless something drastic happens. It is not clear what the President intends to do to bring back the government on track to deliver to Kenyans.

Evidently, Riggy G is trying hard to work up his Gikuyu community against the president.The DP is trying to blackmail the Meru, Tharaka, Nithi, and Embu communities against what he calls “divide and rule tactic” following the decision by these communities to nominate Internal Security CS, Kithure Kindiki, as their spokesperson.

All the raucous is arising because of the perception among the Gikuyu that President Ruto is systematically drifting away from them. If the president’s dalliance with Raila were to collapse today, all the perceived grievances would disappear overnight.

The writer teaches at the Technical University of Kenya [e-mail]