Former Nyeri Town MP Ngunjiri Wambugu has suggested that Rigathi Gachagua and some Mt Kenya leaders are angry with President William Ruto because their plan to use the region’s voting numbers to influence his decisions failed.
Speaking on Radio Generation (RG 88.8 FM) on Tuesday, October 13, 2026, Ngunjiri said some leaders entered government believing that their support for Ruto in the 2022 General Election would give them the power to dictate how he ran the government.
According to Ngunjiri, the leaders expected Ruto to listen to their demands because Mt Kenya had played a major role in his election.
“I think the people of Mt Kenya are upset because they thought they were playing Ruto,” he said.
Ngunjiri argued that the strategy was to keep reminding the President that the region had helped him win the election and that he therefore needed to consider its interests when making political decisions.
However, he said Ruto refused to accept this kind of pressure, exposing what Ngunjiri believes was a major miscalculation by Gachagua and his allies.
Instead of securing greater influence over the government, the political relationship between Ruto and Gachagua deteriorated, eventually leading to the Deputy President’s impeachment in October 2024.
Ngunjiri explained that some leaders had assumed their numbers gave them enough power to control the President, without considering that Ruto had his own political strategy and could make decisions that did not favour them.
“He refused to fall into your trap or accept the narrative you were pushing. And not only did he refuse, but he also threw you out of government,” Ngunjiri said.
The former MP’s remarks suggest that the current political disagreements are partly rooted in competing expectations about power, influence and the rewards of political alliances.
He believes that failure to understand this reality contributed to the fallout between Ruto and Gachagua, leaving Mt Kenya leaders facing difficult questions about their political strategy and influence
