Splinter group of Kiambu elders pours cold water on Ruto’s Karen meeting with Agikuyu elders
Hours after Deputy President William Ruto met elders from Kiambu in his renewed bid to galvanize support in the vote-rich county, another group emerged and dismissed the second-in-command’s meeting as inconsequential.
The elders, led by Kiama Kiama County chairman Njoroge Minae said Kiambu men are not party to the discussions at Ruto’s residence in Karen, Nairobi.
When they hosted governor James Nyoro at their shrine in Juja, the elders upheld that all men in the county and Mount Kenya region were firmly behind President Uhuru Kenyatta’s political direction and would massively vote for Azimio la Umoja- OKA presidential candidate Raila Odinga in the upcoming polls.
While a section of the elders claimed they had been invited for the meeting with Ruto but boycotted it, they stated that their counterparts had lost focus, saying they would do everything possible to win them back to Azimio to move the Kikuyu community in one direction.
“The elders who met Ruto are part of us because they belong to the Kikuyu community, but they have lost their ways. Although we are not the ones who sent them, we are determined to get them back to this camp,” Minai said.
They said that Ruto had hoodwinked most people in Mount Kenya into believing he is their saviour, but the narrative has since changed, and many, significantly the youth had redefined themselves and were fully supporting Odinga.
The elders at the same time endorsed governor Nyoro and the entire Jubilee candidates saying he had transformed the county in the shortest time he had been in office.
Kiarie Rugami, the only elder from Murang’a county at the ceremony, revealed that elders have started going down on their knees to pray for Kenya for the prevalence of peace before, during and after elections.
“I was invited to Karen, but I disregarded the call. We have talked to our children, who have accepted the handshake between Uhuru and Odinga, and we cannot now tell them to take another route and support Ruto. This country has had so many negative cycles every electioneering period, and we don’t want to go back there, we are therefore praying for peace during elections,” Rugami said.
On his part, Njenga Mungai, a long-serving former MP for Molo, stated that Uhuru had shown the mountain the correct political direction.
While dismissing Ruto as a deceiver, Mungai maintained that under the leadership of Odinga, deputized by Karua, the country was bound to grow in all its social-economic spheres.
“In Molo and elsewhere, we have all decided to support Jubilee’s six-piece voting pattern because we want to defend Karua in the Odinga’s government. We want Odinga to respect her because she has soldiers in the form of elected leaders in government,” noted Mungai.
