President Ruto’s UDA meeting in Nyeri shows his astuteness
President William Ruto has confounded both friend and foe with the way he has expertly steadied the ship less than one year after his administration was declared persona non grata in the Central region.
Between 2024 and mid-2025, President Ruto’s political career appeared to be hanging in a precarious position, a situation that resulted in the impeachment of the then Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua.
Although the impeachment of Gachagua appeared to upset the vote-rich Mt. Kenya, events over the last couple of weeks have shown once again that Ruto’s rise to the apex of Kenya’s politics was not by chance.
Specifically, the Nyeri UDA meeting that brought together 17, 341 UDA polling centres from Nyeri County sent shockwaves across the political opposition owing to the large attendance and enthusiasm that greeted his arrival.
And, donning the UDA party colours, Nyeri Governor Mutahi Kahiga; a key ally of Gachagua, was on hand to receive and had a message too for people of Mt Kenya and Kenyans in general.
“I belong to the UDA party, and my President is William Samoei Ruto. I want to thank the people of Nyeri and all the elected leaders for walking with us and for supporting our President and his government, the government we voted for,” said Governor Kahiga.
“The meeting brought together officials drawn from across the county to appreciate their role in strengthening internal party democracy and to reaffirm UDA’s grassroots-first political philosophy,” UDA party said in a statement.
Each polling centre was represented by 20 officials, reflecting a broad-based and inclusive engagement with party structures at the lowest electoral unit, the party said. The participants were drawn from all six constituencies in Nyeri County.
It was also the week that Gachagua, who heads the Democracy for the Citizens Party (DCP), watched as his top generals, like Githunguri MP Gathoni Wamuchomba and Juja MP George Koimburi, make scathing attacks before decamping, eliciting reactions across the political arena.
During the meeting, Mathira MP Eric Wamumbi maintained that UDA still has a strong presence in the Mt Kenya region, noting that residents have since realised that the opposition had nothing to offer.
“These people have not changed, they are the same people who overwhelmingly voted for Dr Ruto in 2022, and they will do it again,” said Wamumbi.
Meanwhile, the Head of State sought to assure locals that the region is still at the centre of his plans, noting that the government had allocated Sh 4 billion for road construction in Nyeri County.
“For a long time, the bigger challenge in Kenya has been sharing the small cake we have. We now have a strategy to bake a bigger cake for everybody to share,” President Ruto said.
“Through visionary leadership, political collaboration, and unity of purpose, we are establishing a strong political unit to carry the national agenda beyond a single election cycle and to provide continuity in our development journey,” he added.
