Riggy G and media lesson: He who keepeth his tongue keepeth his soul

“Don’t bother about these people. Forget about these characters, be like me,” angrily barked Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, frothing at his mouth at a funeral in Murang’a months after he was elected into office.

For minutes, a deputy president of a democratically elected government ran his mouth against free media, describing it as a corrupt, cartel institution, and a tool of a vanquished “system.”

“You will not take us anywhere. If we defeated the deep state, and the system, who are you?” he pressed further with his broadside, menacingly brandishing his fingers in a brazen threat.

“Your opinion is not necessary, and we don’t bother about it, because we know who pays you.”

This was Gachagua at the height of his short-lived power in Kenya Kwanza, a man who hated the media to the bone. At every turn and opportunity, he mocked, flogged and frothed at the men and women of the media.

His dubious history in student politics, shady past in provincial administration, brief stint in Parliament and controversial circumstances leading to the 2022 presidential elections, lent him to this mission.

As a uniformed officer, he had been used to barking orders in barazas, and ramming down government policies on the people. The system he regaled in at the time, was impervious to calls for accountability, transparency and people participation.

To the system that weaned him for leadership, the media was, in the words of one of its luminaries, an illegitimate child, conceived on the roadside. Nothing good could come out of such an institution.

Despite lending his tongue to the system, he never made it far in government. From a District Officer Cadet in 1990 to a Personal Assistant for Head of Civil Service in 1991, back as a DO in 1997 and back as Personal Assistant of Local Government Minister Uhuru Kenyatta in the early 2000s, he was always in the shadows of a bigger man.

Except for unverified government memos which keep circulating, the circumstances of his exit from civil service remain unclear at best and dodgy at worst. Very few people seem to know what happened or where he disappeared to until he surged forth when the star of his brother Nderitu Gachagua was dimming.

In the shadow of his late brother, he was elected MP for Mathira in 2017, serving a rather lacklustre term until a corruption case thrust him into the headlines, pushing him to the centre of succession politics. When William Ruto gambled on him for a running mate, all attention now shifted to the former DO who had spent his life dodging the limelight.

It did not help that the media was caught up in the Ruto-Kenyatta fallout. Gachagua took his position as a running-mate with gusto and trained his eyes, ears and mouth on the media. The narrative then was that the media was part of the “deep state” they were running against.

Upon victory, he bared all his fangs. Right from the inauguration speech when he went off tangent to the time he unveiled his doomed “shareholding” narrative, Gachagua set himself up for media censure, leading to an early fight.

In his world, the government was like a company with shares and owners. Some owners had majority shares, others just a few and others had none. It was a matter of how one invested in the company.

“That is the way it is going to me, and you will see,” he dug in as editorials were written and read out, calling him out over the “shareholder” remarks.

When the first whiff of corruption within the administration flared up in early 2023, Gachagua closed ranks with top government officials who came down hard on the media for reporting the issues. They singled out the media and banks for crushing, declaring them as cartels.

Whenever he was given the opportunity by the same media to correct himself, he would rub it in, or go off tangent: “We expect the media to know that the elections are over. Azimio lost! We know you went to bed with them. Can you stop living in denial?”

It was Gachagua who popularised the refrain that the government would raise its concerns against the media “with the people of Kenya”. In essence, the government would henceforth set the people against the media.

With this came the chorus to hold the media to account. At a graduation ceremony, he presided over at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Gachagua went on a tirade, mocking the media for crying out loud when held to account and underscoring his gladness that the media was under pressure.

“You have seen nothing,” he declared, adding: “It is good you are feeling the way we feel. You have been hitting us left, right and centre but nobody has ever held you to account.”

Throughout the year 2023, Gachagua ran a campaign to inform Kenyans that the media had been biased over the election period. He claimed that the media sponsored headlines against Ruto's bid, ran fake opinion polls, and was part of the Azimio coalition.

He had particular disdain for The Standard Group establishment, often singling it out in public rallies and events, ridiculing its reportage of national issues, including the budget demands of his office.

“And I want to call out the Standard newspaper. They owe the Office of the Deputy President an apology.”

Partly owing to his acerbic tongue, and the habit of riding roughshod over critics, he baptized himself the “truthful man.” The truthful man became a carefree, careless and reckless alter ego of himself.

He spoke what others believed in but could not say because it was unpalatable. He reinvented the structure of hatchet jobs by giving the function a placement at the top. His juniours did not have to crush the media, opposition or other institutions as he was undertaking the job at the top.  

“Nobody will ever change me. I am natural. I will never change my language, I will not change my character, I will never change the way I speak. Unless the people of Kenya tell me to stop. And they usually urge me on,” he once declared.

The more he ran his mouth, the more he earned new enemies. The overzealous protector of the Kenya Kwanza (KK) regime began to attract enemies within his government. The murmurs grew, and rebellion started taking shape against him.

As usual, he dismissed this as the handiwork of his old enemy, the media. They had refused to move on from the Azimio loss.

“You are gonna wait for a long, long, long time, and you will be disappointed. There will be no cracks in this government. This is a government made of leaders who have been brought together by a plan,” he railed at journalists in Mombasa, saying they had been waiting for KK to collapse.

He was wallowing in the miasma of power when the Gen Z protest happened in June, and with it began his downfall. This time around, Gachagua did not blame the media. Instead, he directed his rage at the National Intelligence Service boss Noordin Haji, blaming his agency for intelligence lapse.

That became his Waterloo, for a chain of events ensued which placed him on the firing line. The opposition he invested so much time bashing took the opportunity of the protests, to negotiate its way into government.

In a political masterstroke, opposition leader Raila Odinga failed to lend a hand to the protesters’ clarion call of Ruto Must Go, effectively killing the movement softly. It is claimed that he did so ostensibly out of the fear that a Ruto resignation would have made way for a “truthful man” reign.

Others say this was simply a ploy to isolate Gachagua and put him where he truly belonged. Whatever the case, a moment was seized through which the man from Mathira was going to be cut down to size. He started to gravitate more and more towards the people, and far away from the government.

“I know my employers, and I know who matters to me in this equation. That person who matters to me is the one who I talk to, not the media. You only quote me by the way, I normally don’t address you. I address the people, I talk to Kenyans, and I have chemistry with the Kenyan people,” he gloated.

From the Kenyan people, he narrowed everything down to the “mountain”, consolidating his people for the battle ahead. When everything failed, he turned to the media he had bashed for two years to put up his case.

“I want to thank you for your coverage of the shoddy public participation of this impeachment motion,” he told a live broadcast in one of the last interviews ahead of the impeachment.

From a foremost tormentor to a brand new psalmist of media, the apostate had done a full circle.

“You guys are wonderful, you are good people,” the ‘truthful man’ said.

In the end, the story of Geoffrey Rigathi Gachagua is the manifestation of the wisdom inherent in the book of Proverbs 21:23: Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue, keepeth his soul from troubles.

He was failed by his tongue and mouth.