Riggy G can't speak for Mulembe nation when Ruto dangles carrot

 

Impeached deputy president, Rigathi Gachagua, is stooping to speak for the people of Mulembe. Otherwise known as the Abaluhya, the Mulembe nation is being told to ask President William Ruto difficult questions.  

Riggy G is sending out to know what happened to the pre-election covenant the President had with Musalia Mudavadi and Moses Wetang’ula, on the eve of the 2022 election. It is an awkward set-up. The one person who distinguished himself throughout 2023, and much of 2024, for vociferous angst against the Mulembe nation now seeks to speak for it. Riggy G has spoken straight to this nation on multiple-barrel live radio.  His style has been inelegant, yet the facts are painfully on point, hence the awkwardness.  

“President Ruto is taking you for a ride,” that is Gachagua’s message to Western. “We, people of Mt Kenya, were once there,” he says, “We were Dr Ruto’s darlings. He toured our region without ceasing. He greeted us in our mother tongue, dressed in local regalia, sang our songs, and endeared us to him. 

“Yet in all this, we were only being cheated. Once he romped home with the presidential electoral victory, he turned against us,” Riggy G is saying. And he concludes, “Now it is your turn to be cheated. Please take a lesson from us and avoid being fooled.”  

The poet John Donne (1572–1631) famously wrote that no man is an island, entire of itself. Each piece of the continent is a part of the main. Each man’s bad experience diminishes us. For, we are involved in humankind. When the people of Mt Kenya suffer, Lake Victoria should know it is next. Mt Elgon should not send to ask for whom the bell it tolls. It tolls for them. If the previous season ate Mt Kenya, the next shall eat Lake Victoria and Mt Elgon.  

It is the dilemma of the message and the messenger; the argument and the integument. Can Riggy G speak for Western? Can he be trusted in the region any more than Dr Ruto should be? The former DP is right when he says the President is in the grip of electoral anxiety. His limping relations with the Mountain have lost him a huge voting demographic. He must replace these numbers. Accordingly, he picks up his 2022 script, beats it up to remove dust, and sallies off to Lake Victoria and Ingoo.  

Turn the tables

He changes nothing. Greetings in mother tongue. Are you happy? Praise the Lord, and “ai, ai, ai!” all rendered in the local idiom. There is also spewing animus against someone. Where in the past it was President Uhuru Kenyatta, now it is Riggy G, and obliquely Mt Kenya. They are styled as “tribal, corrupt, inefficient,” and a host of other pejoratives. The President is a man on a mission. He must turn the tables against an individual and an ethnic demographic.  

Dr Ruto must also fill up his Lake Basin audience with sufficient negative energy against Riggy G and the Mountain. This energy should make them perceive the 2027 election as a referendum on the Mountain people. The election should not be based on how Ruto has governed. Not on any solid issue, except Riggy G and the Mountain. “The Mountain Versus the Rest of Us” is the subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, message. And it might just work. 

Not to be outdone, Riggy G chimes in with a memory of 2022. He reminds the Mulembe nation of the pre-election covenant that Dr Ruto made with them through the ANC and Ford Kenya brigades. It is a catalogue of failed promises. Dr Ruto has elected not to talk about them. The concern is valid, however.

One thousand kilometres of bitumen roads for the region. Three new factories of unspecified goods. Revival of Mumias, Nzoia, and Pan Paper Mills. And there are a dozen other failed promises. So what will be different this time, Riggy G is asking? 

But, again, can Riggy G be a trusted spokesperson for Western? For, he spent his pre-impeachment season fighting against this region. He stooped low enough to prevent Mudavadi from working from the Harambee Avenue Office of the President and from the Harambee House Annex. He even followed him to Railways Headquarters, all because Mulembe “did not contribute anything to Ruto victory of 2022.” It had “very few shares.” 

Yes, Rigathi Gachagua is right. Dr Ruto is playing the same old card. The same old political tricks. In the end, nothing is likely to come from them. But Riggy G has been far too hostile to speak for Western Kenya. He can’t. 

Dr Muluka is a strategic communications adviser. www.barrackmuluka.co.ke