Kenya’s Vice President Rigathi Gachagua faces the most trying moments in his political career. His political allies have conspired to get rid of him through a controversial impeachment proceeding in their bicameral house.
He is being stewed for allegedly fanning and funding the Gen-Z demonstration that destabilized President William Samoei Ruto’s government, leading to his doing what he had sworn not to do: doling out to Raila Amollo Odinga a share of a piece of loaf packed with four cabinet positions or so.
This discourse investigates the undertow that led to Gachagua’s imminent hour of political earthquake and reckoning.
Political daggers are aimed at the hapless Gachagua. His crimes include masterminding Gen-Z mayhem that threatened to oust President Ruto’s government and undermining the Ruto presidency.
Kenyans are divided in the middle over his political persecution, and the clergy community has urged caution since the country has bigger issues to resolve.
Also, read Gen Z Leading Political Change in Kenya: What Does It Mean for African Politics?
But Who is Rigathi Gachagua?
Geoffrey Rigathi Gachagua (born 28 February 1965) is a Kenyan politician who has served as Vice President since 2022.
He previously served as the Member of Parliament for Mathira Constituency between 2017 and 2022, representing the Jubilee Party. In the 2022 election, William Ruto selected Gachagua as his running mate, and the two were elected with 50.49% of the vote.
He previously served in various government roles, including Assistant Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs and National Heritage, personal assistant to the Head of the Public Service, personal assistant to Minister for Local Government Uhuru Kenyatta, and district officer.
He was born in 1965 in Hiriga village of Nyeri County, the child of Gachagua Reriani and Martha Kirigo.
His parents were Mau Mau freedom fighters in Mt. Kenya forest. His father serviced guns for the Mau Mau, while his mother was the fighters’ food and ammunition courier.
He is the younger brother of the late Nderitu Gachagua, the first governor of Nyeri County. He attended Kabiruini Primary School from 1971 to 1977 before completing his O and A levels at Kianyaga High School.
1985, he joined the University of Nairobi, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Literature in 1988.
At the University of Nairobi, Gachagua led the Nyeri District University Students Association (NDUSA) and the chairman of the Association of Literature Students.
During Uhuru Kenyatta’s reign, he was a Mathira MP since 2007 and remained so until his political buddy, President William Samuoi Ruto, picked him for the veepstakes.
It is the way that Mr. Ruto settled for Gachagua that set him against Professor Kithure Kindiki, who garnered the highest votes from the Kenya Kwanza committee tasked with shortlisting potential vice president candidates. Professor Kithure Kindiki, now the cabinet secretary in internal security, has recently been coronated as the spokesperson of the vote-rich Mount Kenya!
Ironically, both political nemesis hail from Mountain Kenya. If a bicameral parliament sacks Gachagua, the Mountain Kenya vote may split, depending on whom succeeds him, in a manner akin to the Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta presidential bids of 2002.
Moreover, the relationship between Nyeri County, where Gachagua hails, and the rest of Mountain Kenya will suffer serious damage, possibly permanently, presuming Prof Kithure Kindiki will be a main beneficiary of Gachagua’s fall.
The Azimio brigades, now in an unsteady hand of Kalonzo Musyoka and Eugene Wamalwa, following the Raila Odinga brigade of ODM, had joined the government and smelled blood.
Now, they have come to defend Mr. Gachagua’s plot to chop off Nyeri County from the rest of Mount Kenya. That is a political gimmick to weaken the Kenya Kwanza coalition and dim Ruto’s future political fortunes.
The beleaguered Azimio coalition silently hopes that Mr. Gachagua will be impeached and removed from office so that they can welcome him and his supporters into their tent.
Although Azimio stands with Gachagua in public and private, they are gleefully praying the Kenya Kwanza coalition will bleed to death, paving a path for them to win power in 2027.
Part of Raila Amollo’s difficult path to winning presidential elections was his inability to keep his ODM coalition intact, which included the vote-rich KAMATUSA tribal outfit.
KAMATUSA, an abbreviation for the Kalenjin, Maasai, Turkana, and Samburu tribes in Rift Valley, had helped former president Arap Moi win multiparty elections despite bigger tribes conspiring to unseat him.
Gachagua’s political niggling issues began on a day President Ruto snubbed Professor Kindiki to be his second in command.
On the day President Ruto announced that Gachagua would be his running mate, Professor Kindiki’s face should have been livid.
His face twitched, aghast struck, and he sulked. A few hours later, he announced he was taking a compulsory sabbatical leave from politics, only to resurface when President Ruto appointed him to be internal security boss.
Take a look at the history of the veeps in Kenya. Unless cornered, you will see that the president avoids picking vice presidents with a strong political base apprehensive of promoting a potential rival.
The first Kenyan president, Jomo Kenyatta, had two vice presidents in 13 years: Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Daniel Arap Moi. Moi had four vice presidents in 24 years: Josephat Njuguna Karanja and later Mwai Kibaki, followed by Professor George Saitoti and Wycliffe Mudavadi. Mwai Kibaki had 3 VPs in 10 years: Michael Wamalawa, Moody Awory and Kalonzo Musyoka. Uhuru Kenyatta had one vice president in 10 years: William Samuoi Ruto.
President Ruto, who has hardly been in office for two years, may add a second vice president if the impeachment process against Gachagua goes smoothly.
Uncertainty Looms as Gachagua Faces Impeachment in Kenya
The impeachment of the Vice President in Kenya is not without ambiguity. After the Danson Mungatana senator of Tana River County lodged the impeachment proceedings in the Senate, former National Assembly majority leader Aden Duale faulted the process, claiming that the impeachment proceedings must begin in Parliament, not in the Senate.
A third of MPs in the Parliament should support the motion to proceed to the Senate, where an investigatory Committee will be formed to establish the authenticity of the offences.
If the Committee approves the charges by majority, the Senate will vote out Gachagua as vice president if two-thirds of the senators support the motion.
From the Kenyan constitution, Article 150 (1) (b) has identified the charges that can be levelled against the vice president: gross violation of the Kenyan constitution or any other Kenyan law, commission of crime under Kenyan law or international law and gross misconduct. Nobody accuses Gachagua of felonies, so his charge sheet falls under gross misconduct.
The first two may require a conviction in a court of law, but they are subject to interpretations as a political process.
Mr. Gachagua knows he is in a political fix and has been marshalling Mount Kenya’s political support, but he seems to be at odds with his people.
Traditional leaders have been devising ways to anoint Professor Kindiki as their Mount Kenya spokesman, signalling that Mr Gachagua’s days in office could be numbered.
Paradoxically, President Ruto, in settling for Gachagua, mentioned Gachagua’s nonconformist and maverick politician as his overriding assets, but these same talents have proven to wedge a crack between the two.
READ RELATED: President Ruto Invites the Opposition into His Cabinet: What’s the Real Deal Behind the Curtain?
Gachagua accusers allege he has been insubordinating the president and was plotting to oust him, deploying the unruly thugs to break shops and supermarkets, among others, turning Kenya into a failed state. It is not easy to see the motive for Gachagua.
What would he have gained if, in the least of possibilities, President Ruto was removed from office? True, the Kenyan constitution says he would have succeeded President Ruto pending an election within 90 days.
With the Kalenjin’s massive vote unlikely to support Gachagua and Mount Kenya enduring a rebellion in its backyard, I cannot see this as a possibility. This charge is a fabrication to shout out aloud.
However, Gachagua has advocated tribal politics that may not be compatible with a cosmopolitan president, Ruto. For instance, Gachagua had been clamouring for Kenya Kwanza government shareholding based on people’s votes.
That, too, did not sit well with his boss. He has been urging President Ruto to fire the director of national security in public. President Ruto was pissed off and resisted those overtures.
Gachagua’s mercurial conduct, Which patently usurped presidential powers, may explain why he must be sacked, and he will be.
The two gentlemen just happened to rub shoulders the wrong way. Two bulls cannot stay in the same cattle shelter, a Kiswahili saying pertinent to this episode. “Fahali wawili hawawezi kukaa zizi moja” is its Kiswahili translation.
In Parliament, the deputy speaker, Gladys Boss Shollei, leads the onslaught against Gachagua. Ms. Shollei is a Kalenjin and would not come out in the open if she did not know the position of the president himself, President Ruto, a fellow Kalenjin.
Gachagua’s problems are not in Kalenjin per se but in Mount Kenya, where senators and MPs have been pushing for his removal from office for some time now.
They blame him for polarizing rhetoric that aided the Gen-Z demonstrations once he publicly declared that Kenya Kwanza was operating like a corporation, with shares distributed based on votes in the last election.
He had also been pushing for the distribution of the national cake based on population sizes, which ignited the wrath of small populations who felt they would be marginalized.
President Ruto is Gachagua’s personal friend, but former president Daniel Arap Moi once said that there is no friendship in politics, and that is what is happening between two top public officeholders in Kenya.
Moi addressed queries about why he had snubbed his VP, Prof. George Saitoti, to succeed him for a by-then political neophyte, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta.
Gachagua will mount his defence in the Senate but will perspire to address his broadside of “one shilling for one Kenyan.”
The Senate will conclude that his actions amounted to tribalism and, therefore, fit all four squares as gross misconduct, a sufficient case to oust him from office.
Gachagua may later lodge his matter in Kenyan courts. Still, unless his case is anchored in procedural irregularities such as the quorum or the voting threshold not being achieved, the courts will dismiss his legal assault for want of jurisdiction to interfere with another arm of the government since the matters in question fall into issues of interpretation of performance or lack of it.
The performance-based grave offences fall into a grey interpretation area, and courts will feel the bicameral houses were in a better position to determine them.
Once removed from office, Gachagua will be barred from politics, so the Azimio brigades will find him a toothless political force anywhere in Kenya.
But once the Parliament impeaches him, Gachagua may follow in the footsteps of the only Vice president to have tendered resignation and save himself from a public humiliation whose outcome was known even before the impeachment proceedings began in earnest: Josephat Njuguna Karanja during Moi’s reign.
Weirdly, the charges levelled against Gachagua mirror those of Karanja. So, their fates are likely to be the same. Gachagua will also enjoy all the perks of a retired VP if he humbly accepts his fate and resigns before the Senate removes him from office.
The financial incentives are just too enticing to let go. Professor Kithure Kindiki is leading the list in Mount Kenya to succeed him. Still, it would be a big political blunder for President Ruto to reward those behind Gachagua’s dismissal.
So, somehow, I do not find Kindiki getting the nod for veepstakes.
However, I have another reason centred on the strength of the political base. While Prof Kindiki may pick endorsements from Mountain Kenya, that alone may alert President Ruto.
No Kenyan president has risked bringing a political rival closer since the acrimonious relationship between the first president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, and Oginga or Uhuru Kenyatta versus William Ruto. Prof Kindiki is just too ambitious to get the Veepstakes greenlight.
It looks like the quiet Musalia Mudavadi may get the promotion. After all, he was the shortest-serving vice president in Kenyan history.
He may get a chance to elongate his record there. Still, he is also an astute politician adept at navigating the turbulent politics of Kenya without stepping on too many toes, as Gachagua has been doing.
Besides, his seniority in the cabinet demands just that. Western Kenya will be on cloud seven, sensing Mudavadi has been tipped to succeed President Ruto in 2032 following his elevation to VP.
Mount Kenya will find it hard within Kenya Kwanza to challenge Mudavadi in 2032 without losing Western Kenya votes.
Can President Ruto name a woman as VP? It is very possible but doubtful. If that is in the pipeline, it will require going back to Mountain Kenya, where the Governor of Kirinyaga, Anne Waiguru, is a stellar performer.
I say so, because drawing from history when Kenya Kwanza was ruminating who was to be the vice president her name kept cropping up, and was supported by a group of women from Mombasa.
Some brazenly murmured that she had engineered her campaign in the women’s fraternity. Still, she is not in any way exuding a threatening posture toward President Ruto’s stay in power, seeing that her run to secure her second Kirinyaga governorship was not without confrontational contentions.
If keeping Kirinyaga under her wraps was a sweltering exercise, you can imagine taming Mountain Kenya for a woman would likely be a tenuous proposition.
In the public meeting where the then-Vice President Ruto announced Gachagua as his running mate, Ruto had consoling words for Waiguru.
The then Vice President Ruto promised her: “...I can assure you, Ms. Waiguru, you have a bright political future in Kenya Kwanza. There are many positions that you can fill; just be patient.”
Were President Ruto’s remarks festooning with vision, ambition, and hope now coming to fruition? Well, time is a better seer in this matter.
If I get my predictions wrong, spare me from ad hominem, remembering I was thinking out loud as a student of political history.
Before I ink off, I must reveal my gut feeling, which you can call a hunch or something to that effect: Kithure Kindiki may be promoted to the Chief Cabinet minister, a position now held by Musalia Mudavadi, assuming the latter ascends to fill the Gachagua post.
However, if Ms Anne Waiguru sneaks in to replace Gachagua, Mudavadi and Prof Kindiki will be smart enough to stay put in their dockets until 2032, when President Ruto is constitutionally barred from running for a third term.
Then, the complex permutations of who will succeed President Ruto will rupture in earnest. It will be nasty and messy, but President Ruto will attempt to manage oversized egos. I cannot wait to watch the bloodletting that will follow.
Whoever said politics are dull knows no damn thing!
