Edwin Sifuna clashes with Okwara over accountability for paybill contributions: “These aren’t taxes”
I was shocked to the ground listening to presidential candidate from the Linda Mwananchi team, Edwin Sifuna during a televised interview with Citizen TV anchor Yvonne Okwara because the Sifuna you see there will scare you to death if you are a Kenyan voter hoping for quality leadership in the 2027 elections from the opoosition.
Sifuna was furious when asked how he and his Linda team will account for the money they receive from the public to make sure the money is not misused.
Sifuna told Yvonne Okwara who was interviewing him to only ask him questions related to what money she has contributed personally to the team and shut up about any other contributions.
Sifuna went on to assert that the money they are getting from the public are not taxes and he doesn’t have to account for anything. I mean this is a guy who wants to be the president of Kenya by next year and that is his approach not just to media questions but to Kenyans who publicly contribute money to him and that money comes in Sifuna’s name.
Sifuna has confirmed that his Linda Mwananchi campaign Paybill has received Sh. 6.5 million in public contributions, while coming under sharp questioning over how he intends to account for the funds.
What is Linda Mwananchi’s money being used for?
Sifuna said each Linda Mwananchi rally costs approximately Sh. 2.5 million to stage, with expenses covering stage setup, sound equipment, DJs, and security personnel.
He described the paybill, number 3033409, as a transparent fundraising tool, noting that contributors willingly send amounts as small as KSh 10.
“If that mama in Kamukuywa asks me, Sifuna, where did my 10 bob go, I will explain to them where that 10 bob went,” he said.
Sifuna and Okwara clash over accountability format
Okwara pushed further, asking whether Sifuna had a structured plan, whether a spreadsheet, periodic reports, or post-rally disclosures, that would account for the funds on the same public platform used to solicit them.
The exchange sharpened when Sifuna told the anchor, “I don’t know if you have sent money. I wish you would speak about your money, Yvonne. Don’t speak about other people’s money.”
Okwara rejected the framing, stating that she was asking on behalf of the public and that her questions were not personal, despite admitting to no personal contribution.
“We hold this job in public trust,” she responded.
Sifuna maintained that the contributions were voluntary and ‘they were not taxes,’ drawing a clear distinction between public donations and state funds.
Okwara conceded the point but argued that a leader positioning himself as an alternative to the current political establishment should demonstrate a higher standard of transparency.
On the question of a reporting schedule, Sifuna said the format would follow the preferences of those who contributed.
“If they wanted daily accountability, it’s possible to do it. If they wanted monthly accountability, it’s possible to do it,” he said, without committing to a specific mechanism.
The Linda Mwananchi rallies have drawn criticism from a section of leaders since the paybill was launched, with detractors questioning why members of the public were being asked to finance the political gatherings.
Sifuna has previously defended the initiative, arguing that large campaign budgets are not a prerequisite for running for office.
Sifuna Rejects Senate Bribery Claims, Defends Public Crowdfunding, and Outlines Political Strategy Ahead of 2027
Also in the same interview Edwin Sifuna has strongly dismissed ongoing allegations of financial bribery and corruption within the Senate during the impeachment proceedings of former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua.
Sifuna termed the bribery accusations as “wild allegations” aimed at tarnishing political reputations, emphasizing that no concrete evidence has ever been presented to substantiate the claims.
Addressing allegations raised regarding cash inducements to influence senatorial votes during the high-profile impeachment, Sifuna maintained that he required no external motivation to take a stand. He clarified that his stance against the former Deputy President was grounded in public record, specifically citing previous public statements and formal complaints he made against Gachagua’s alleged interference in the governance and administration of Nairobi City County and devolution.
Addressing his political stance on working alongside Rigathi Gachagua following his impeachment, Sifuna explained that legal principles bar double jeopardy. Having already voted to impeach Gachagua for specific infractions, Sifuna noted that any shared effort to hold the current administration accountable aligns with broader political objectives, comparing political strategy to a collective hunt where different actors play specific roles.
Concluding his remarks on campaign finance reform, Sifuna expressed strong support for legislation capping campaign spending in Kenya. He argued that high financial barriers currently restrict young and emerging leaders from participating in elective politics. Sifuna affirmed that Linda Wananchi remains committed to the rule of law and will fully comply with any campaign financing regulations established by Parliament.
Sifuna says he’s ready to work with Gachagua despite backing his impeachment
There is one thing Edwin Sifuna missed about whether he is willing to work with Gachagua in the opposition and that is the fact that for Sifuna it is not about working with Gachagua but about taking orders from the opposition boss and doing whatever Gachagua asks him to do and just keep quiet after that is done.
Sifuna should know by now that any chance of him running for the presidency in the United Opposition ticket is something Gachagua will not even consider. That issue is dead on arrival and that is mainly going to be for Kalonzo Musyoka who has been dead politically lately and is coming back to hold rallies over the weekend after Gachagua told the media to ask him why he is nowhere to be seen campaigning.
Whatever the case, no new person just coming into the opposition is going to hold the presidential ticket in 2027. Sifuna may hope to get the DP spot in the United Opposition ticket but sadly enough for him that too is taken.
Gachagua will not run an opposition presidential ticket where there is no Mt. Kenya member and that is now Senator John Methu’s job to pick after his heroics in the Ol Kalou by-election.
Sifuna will have to take his orders from Gachagua or else ran away from the United Opposition.
Overall, Edwin Sifuna said he’s willing to work with former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua despite having voted to impeach him, arguing that the opposition’s shared goal of removing President William Ruto from office outweighs their past political differences.
Sifuna said the Linda Mwananchi movement is prepared to work with anyone committed to upholding the Constitution, the rule of law and unseating President Ruto.
“We will work with everyone who believes in these things, the Constitution and the rule of law. We will work with anyone who believes that Ruto does not deserve an extra day in office and, for as long as that’s our cause, we will work together,” Sifuna stated.
“Nothing has changed. First of all, as a lawyer, I’ll tell you there’s a rule against double jeopardy. He paid for his mistakes, he was impeached. What else do you want me to do, beat him?” he posed.
Nyandarua Senator John Methu occupies the seat reserved for the Deputy President in the Speaker’s Gallery during the swearing-in of Ol Kalou MP-elect Sammy Kamau on July 28, 2026.
The real deal for Edwin Sifuna is that Gachagua already have people ahead of him who are irreplaceable. Nyandarua Senator John Methu takes everything that Sifuna could ever hope for in the United Opposition running team in 2027. He could be picked by Gachagua to run for the presidency and if that does not work, he is the automatic United Opposition candidate for the DP to Kalonzo and that chapter is closed.
The United Opposition will be open to supporting Sifuna as their candidate for the same senate seat he now holds in Nairobi County and even that will be very tough for him because he could only be one of the candidates that Gachagua supporters will vote to pick and there is no guarantee they will pick him for that seat because Nairobi is packed with DCP supporters and they may pick anybody else for Nairobi Senator job and Sifuna will be in the cold completely. That is politics and Sifuna knows everything about that as he has been there for a while now.
Asked what happens after William Ruto is removed from power since WANTAM seems to be the only agenda for the entire opposition including the Linda Mwananchi team, Sifuna brought in what Raila Odinga and opposition leaders did to take Moi out of the presidency which according to him was “Moi Must Go”.
“We have a history as a country… there is a life we used to live, then we decided that this life has to stop. I will take you back to 2002, which is the first time that some of us were voting; when we were kicking out Moi, why were we saying Moi must go? Why were we saying the KANU state has to go? It’s not because Moi did not build stadiums. Moi is the one who built Kasarani and Moi stadiums,” Sifuna said.
Sifuna forgot the most important agenda that led to Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga removing Moi from power after he had held the presidency for 24 years as a complete dictator.
When Raila declared Kibaki Tosha as they joined hands to kick Moi out of office it was not just about “Moi Must Go” because Raila Odinga joined hands with Mwai Kibaki on a solid agenda which was that Kenya needed a new constitution and the new government was to ensure that was done as soon as they took office.
That excited Kenyans and they wanted to know what that new constitution will be all about and how it will make their lives better. The good news here was that even before Raila Odinga joined hands with Kibaki he had been working on the specifics of the new constitution and they had delegates in every district in Kenya who had come up with the framework of the new constitution.
One of the key pillars of the proposed new constitution was that there will be devolution in Kenya where counties will be established all across the country and the county budgets will focus on the needs of every county and the president will not be holding the whole budget to themselves.
Kenyans fell in love with having a new constitution to get resources allocated to all parts of the country and not just the areas that the president likes because people there support him.
The other very good proposal in the new constitution as the Raila and Kibaki team went across the country to explain was that it would provide in the new constitution a demand for integrity from those who want to seek public office and those who work as state officials and the specific demand was that no criminals, thieves or killers of Kenyans will ever be allowed to hold any public office in the country.
Kenyans loved that too and they were so relieved that finally something was being done to stop all those public fund looters and thieves from running the government or holding public offices in the country.
The new constitution also provided Kenyans with an opportunity to take back land grabbed by the British colonial government and the beast example of that was Kericho tea farms the biggest business in Kenya carried in tens of thousands of acres of land grabbed for free from Kenyans in their home areas.
The Kericho folks after their land was grabbed were reduced to labourers in their own land living in complete poverty while those who grabbed their land were making billions every year from the biggest tea plantations in the world grabbed from Kenyans. To make that happen the new constitution was setting up the Kenya National Land Commission (NLC) to facilitate the process where the land is returned to Kenyans.
The obvious fact is that Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki did not have a blank “Moi Must Go” agenda and it was their new constitution agenda that made Kenyans vote for them to remove Moi from power because they had an agenda to move the country forward after getting rid of Moi and Kenyans liked their agenda.
In fact, the reality is that after victory against Moi, President Mwai Kibaki and his new team at State House including Kiraitu Murungi and Martha Karua came to the Bomas Constitution Conference in August 2003 and declared that Kenya did not need a new constitution anymore because with Mwai Kibaki they now had a good president and he should have all the powers he wanted.
I was personally at the Bomas Conference deciding on the new constitution in August 2003 and it was a complete war as the Kibaki people did not want the powers of the president to be reduced and they completely opposed to the idea of having a Prime Minister to share power with the president.
The entire meeting was going into war and what saved it was the announcement that the then Vice President Kijana Wamalwa had died in England and everybody froze at the Bomas Conference and people went home.
Later on in 2005, President Mwai Kiabki came up with a bogus new constitution which kept all powers in his office. Raila Odinga took up the challenge and told Kibaki that he is voting a big NO against the Kibaki fake new constitution.
Edwin Sifuna knows that the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) whose uniform he has worn with a lot of dignity was created in 2005 when Raila Odinga and his group had an Orange as their symbol for NO vote on the 2005 Katiba and the Raila No team crashed Kibaki at the referendum.
Believe it or not Mwai Kibaki and his Yes Vote team in 2005 had Banana as their symbol. I mean a banana? That is bad. Right?
Kibaki was later forced to have a new referendum in 2010 that Raila and his team accepted and that is how we have the 2010 Constitution which all the opposition leaders scream about as the greatest thing to happen in the country. It took a lot of political work and not theatre and drama to get the country to achieve that and that is what it takes to move things forward in Kenya.
Raila loved drama and great jumping and dancing parades in political events but beyond that he preferred to put real agenda before Kenyans at critical times in the life of the nation. That is what Kenya does not have from the opposition today and it is going to be bad news for them at the polls in 2027.
Kenya’s new constitution was approved by 67% of voters in a national referendum on 4 August 2010 and was officially promulgated on 27 August 2010.
That 2010 constitution did not come by accident. It was because people like Raila Odinga made a promise to Kenyans in 2002 that removing Moi from power was not enough until Kenya has a new democratic constitution and Raila Odinga fought his entire life from 2002 to when he died to make sure that constitution was passed and was being implemented.
So here is my cheap advice to Edwin Sifuna after listening to his interview with Citizen TV and he doesn’t have to pay me a penny from the public funds they are collecting. This is my free contribution to the Linda Mwanainchi team.
Please, Mr. Sifuna the fact is that you and your team need an agenda beyond the one term sweet song for the opposition because if you go there with no agenda then once William Ruto is gone and WANTAM is achieved the big boys taking power will tell you to go home because all that you wanted has been achieved and you could as well retire from politics as far as they are concerned.
Start with the fact that some of the key pieces in the 2010 constitution have NOT been achieved and most of that makes the whole 2010 constitution completely useless to Kenyans other than opposition wannabes who yell praises about it.
Start with Chapter Six of the constitution which declared that thieves, criminals and murderers will not hold public office in the presidency, parliament and every public office. Chapter Six has collapsed completely.
Today the only people holding public office from the presidency to the MPs from all parties are all thieves and criminals and in fact it looks like criminality is the only qualification one needs to hold public office in Kenya.
The reason that has happened is that parliament has refused to do its job which was to formulate the legal procedures to keep the criminals out of public offices.
In the 2010 constitution it states the following with regards to Chapter Six:
Parliament shall enact legislation—(a) establishing procedures and mechanisms for the effective administration of this Chapter;
(b) prescribing the penalties, in addition to the penalties referred to in Article 75, that may be imposed for a contravention of this Chapter;
(c) providing for the application of this Chapter, with the necessary modifications, to public officers; and
(d) making any other provision necessary for ensuring the promotion of the principles of leadership and integrity referred to in this Chapter, and the enforcement of this Chapter.
The progressive teams joining the United Opposition led by the likes of Rigathi Gachagua himself who President William Ruto as soon as they took office in August 2022 ordered the DPP to drop the public theft case against him to help him keep Sh. 7.3 billion he stole from Kenyans, should demand that all public theft and other criminal cases go through integrity requirements of the constitution before such people can hold public offices.
The likes of Sifuna should demand that they support the opposition team on the promise that as soon as the new government is in office, parliament will finally come up with legislations to fully enforce Chapter Six on Integrity to get rid of thieves and criminals from all levels of government in Kenya starting with the president at State House all the way to the MPs, governors and public government officials.
In fact, it would make more sense if the specifics of the legislation pieces needed to enforce Chapter Six are framed out right now before the elections and Linda Mwanainchi has lawyers like Sifuna himself and Babu Owino with James Orengo somewhere there should provide specific proposals of the legislation required to enforce Chapter Six of the Kenya constitution. That would be a bigger contribution to the Raila Odinga legacy instead of people telling Kenyans how much he loved them and calling him Baba and all that stuff.
This will mean that the new government apart from just WANTAM manenos will be putting before Kenyans concrete things to be done to make the country better for all Kenyans which is to end grand thieves and criminals holding public offices in Kenya. It will not be achieved by yelling in the streets to get votes and has to be done in a structured and organized way to achieve the goals of Chapter Six on Integrity to hold public office in Kenya.
That could be a start of the easiest agenda to formulate for the opposition where something real can be achieved for Kenyans should they win the elections.
The are other thing that the WANTAM political group who care for the country if they actually do exist is to promise Kenyans that they will go back to the National Land Commission legislation and look at its colossal failures and have new legislation on the land issue in Kenya.
Let’s not forget that the NLC has become the greatest facilitator of land grabs and that started after they took office and were supposed to deal with the Kericho huge tea farms whose lease they got for free had expired after 99 years and that was a great opportunity to get new deals with significant pieces of land going to the local population.
The first thing the NLC did was to help the colonial grabbers of Kenyan land in Kericho to sign a new lease for another 99 years whose objective was to totally kill any hopes of NLC ever trying to get local residents get back a piece of their stolen land. How can that get fixed after the next elections?
In other words, even those who are screaming about the great 2010 constitution as their foundation of forming a new government have refused to accept that the 2010 has been destroyed because the presidency and parliament since the new constitution was signed have done everything to kill that constitution and have pretty much succeeded in doing exactly that and it has to be addressed in the 2027 elections and sorted out beyond the WANTAM music.
Does any Kenyan hear any kind of that new dimension coming from the opposition even from the Linda Mwanainchi group? No. Because none of the opposition parties and groups care about what is good for the country. They want to be in power and get rid of William Ruto and that is enough for them.
I doubt that will be enough for Kenyans to give them power. They need to rethink their plans to take power or they will just go down and try again in 2032.
Adongo Ogony is a Human Rights Activist and a Writer who lives in Toronto, Canada
