President Ruto’s Mt Kenya Tour: Time to Debunk All Gachagua Lies

By Fwamba NC Fwamba

President William Ruto is set to embark on a week-long developmental tour of the Mt. Kenya region, beginning on March 31, 2025.

This marks his most significant visit to the region since the impeachment of former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, a man whose divisive politics and inability to grasp the weight of his office led to his downfall.

Since his removal, Gachagua has relentlessly attempted to paint himself as a political martyr, peddling the falsehood that President Ruto harbors hostility toward the Kikuyu community.

However, this narrative collapses under the weight of facts, revealing Gachagua’s self-serving deceit.

The impeachment of Gachagua was not about the Kikuyu nation, as he claims, but about his own leadership failures. President Ruto has demonstrated this through his deliberate actions, which have only strengthened Mt. Kenya’s representation in government.

Read also:President Ruto’s Nairobi Tour Sets Stage for Mount Kenya Visit

In fact, no single community is represented in the Kenya Kwanza government more than the Mt. Kenya region.

From the Deputy President to key Cabinet Secretaries, Principal Secretaries, heads of state agencies, and influential parastatal appointments, the region enjoys unparalleled access to the highest levels of decision-making in this administration.

This is a reality that completely shatters Gachagua’s narrative of exclusion and marginalization.

The nomination of Prof. Kithure Kindiki as Deputy President immediately discredited the claims that had been propagated by Gachagua and a handful of his allies that the position would be handed to Musalia Mudavadi.

The president later appointed Mutahi Kagwe to the Agriculture docket, William Kabogo to ICT, and Lee Kinyanjui to Trade. These high-profile appointments of Mt Kenya’s political bigwigs, who are more politically experienced than Gachagua both in elective and executive leadership, took Gachagua and his allies by surprise.

Together with many other appointments like that of KRA Chairman Nderitu Mureithi, they ensured that the region continues to hold significant influence in President Ruto’s administration. These appointments exposed Gachagua’s propaganda for what it truly was—an attempt to stoke ethnic paranoia for personal gain.

The appointments demonstrated that President Ruto is more concerned with tapping talent for the delivery of services to the people than serving the insatiable political ego and appetite of one clueless politician who accidentally became deputy president.

Gachagua’s political downfall was, in many ways, a self-inflicted tragedy. His obsession with regional dominance, coupled with a narrow and exclusionary mindset, referring to himself as a villager who cared less about other parts of the country, alienated even his would-be allies.

Ruto’s Mt Kenya Tour

He crafted a false dichotomy between Mt. Kenya and President Ruto, attempting to frame the Head of State as an enemy rather than a unifying leader.

The impeached former deputy president’s ideology rode on the principle that for him to gain, others must lose or lack. At one point, he went as far as alleging that the President planned to sack all Principal Secretaries from the region, an outright lie that was meant to provoke resentment.

It came to him unexpectedly that the president ended up recently accommodating Raila’s ODM allies without anyone having to lose a job, whether from Mt Kenya or elsewhere.

Gachagua has, out of desperation, sometimes made wild remarks in public, like going to Meru and declaring that the president should never set foot in Mt Kenya! This brand of reckless politics is reminiscent of Peter Habenga Okondo, the Western Kenya politician who infamously warned Bishop Alexander Muge against setting foot in Busia.

We all remember how that story ended. When politicians mistake self-interest for community interest, their downfall is inevitable.

Gachagua had the golden opportunity to prove his worth as Deputy President, particularly by addressing the struggles of coffee, milk, and miraa farmers.

Yet, under his watch, these sectors continued to suffer. It was only after his removal that substantive reforms began taking shape under Mutahi Kagwe’s leadership in the Agriculture Ministry. Had Gachagua invested more time in governance and less in political victimhood, his fate might have been different.

But leadership is not about slogans; it is about vision, competence, and the ability to balance national unity with regional representation.

As the Greeks wisely cautioned, audi alteram partem—let the other side be heard. While Gachagua has spent months telling his side of the story, President Ruto is now poised to present his, not just through words but through tangible actions.

His tour of Mt. Kenya is not merely a ceremonial visit but a strategic recalibration—an opportunity to reaffirm his influence in a region that has long been a key political battleground. Those who prematurely celebrated the so-called “loss of Mt. Kenya” may soon realize they miscalculated. Politics, much like chess, is a game of patience, positioning, and precision.

Ruto is not merely responding to Gachagua’s propaganda; he is re-engaging the people directly, leveraging his well-honed political instincts. His previous strategy of meeting wananchi on the ground, listening to their concerns, and offering practical solutions secured him the presidency. There is little reason to believe this approach will fail him now.

Shakespeare’s Othello offers a fitting lesson for Gachagua’s political downfall. The words of the villainous Iago—”Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing; / ’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands: / But he that filches from me my good name / Robs me of that which not enriches him, / And makes me poor indeed.”—highlight the dangers of deceit and misplaced ambition.

Gachagua sought to tarnish President Ruto’s name for his own political survival, but in the end, it is he who has been politically impoverished. His lies did not strengthen him; they merely accelerated his irrelevance.

Plato once wrote, “The measure of a man is what he does with power.” Gachagua squandered his, believing that proximity to power equated to invincibility. He failed to internalize the lessons of history—power is neither owned nor permanent; it is borrowed from the people.

The Kenyan Constitution, under Article 1(1), affirms that “all sovereign power belongs to the people.” Any leader who forgets this principle risks political oblivion. Even Niccolò Machiavelli, in The Prince, warned against allowing arrogance to replace strategy. Gachagua’s miscalculation lay in assuming that ethnic identity alone could shield him from the political consequences of poor leadership.

Ruto’s Mt Kenya Tour

The President holds many cards, and this tour is but one of them. Those who mistake temporary turbulence for a permanent shift fail to grasp the dynamism of Kenyan politics. The tides can change swiftly, and Ruto, as a seasoned political player, knows how to turn setbacks into opportunities. Even among his former allies, Gachagua’s influence is waning.

Githunguri MP Gathoni Wamuchomba, who initially sympathized with him during the impeachment process, recently admitted in a media interview that Gachagua was the architect of his own downfall. When former allies begin to openly critique a leader’s governance style, it is often a sign of declining fortunes. The sympathy that once shielded Gachagua is rapidly reaching its expiration date.

The legal and constitutional framework of Kenya does not provide room for self-entitlement in leadership. Article 73(1)(a) of the Constitution defines leadership as a “public trust to be exercised in a manner that brings honor, integrity, and dignity to the office.” Gachagua’s conduct in office contradicted this very principle.

Instead of fostering unity and working to strengthen the national government’s agenda, he chose to incite divisions, disregarding the constitutional requirement for national cohesion under Article 10(2)(b). His style of politics, therefore, was not just a betrayal of leadership ethics but also a constitutional breach.

Leadership is not about self-glorification or monopolizing regional identity; it is about inspiring confidence, delivering results, and uniting people under a shared vision.

Julius Caesar famously declared, “Men willingly believe what they wish.” Gachagua may believe his own narrative, but belief does not alter reality. The reality is that President Ruto has demonstrated a strategic mastery that has left his opponents politically exposed.

In politics, as in war, victory belongs to those who play the long game.

Fwamba NC Fwamba is a Governance Analyst and Chairman of the National Alternative Leadership Forum