Yes, Mudavadi’s earthquake has happened but it may not be the one he expected. Mudavadi’s big move was to endorse William Ruto for the presidency and hopefully get into the Ruto cabinet but the poor guy did not tell his friends in OKA about that and they stormed off the Mudavadi circus at Bomas.

Now Mudavadi is stuck with Ruto and the rest of the OKA leadership is out and most likely going to Azimio la Umoja coalition.

Mudavadi will get Ruto maybe 50,000 votes and cost him a few million to Azimio.

Mudavadi is finished as far as the presidency is concerned and so is Ruto. They just strangled each other to death. Good.

With these kinds of clowns, you are doomed politically. Kenyan politics is actually serious business.

Musalia Mudavadi is a good guy. I have known him for a long time. We were at the University of Nairobi together in the early 1980s.

Mudavadi was a famous rugby player with the Mean Machines which was a national rugby team. At the time the University of Nairobi was very much into sports. Mean Machine was up there with other professional rugby teams.

In basketball our team was the “Terrorists” yes that was the name of the University of Nairobi basketball team and they were very good.

So Mudavadi was in Hall 6 and I was in Hall 1 but one of my best comrades on the campus was Geda Opon who was also in Hall 6 with Mudavadi on the same floor.

Read: Raila visiting mothers and families of political detainees and prisoners was very special

So me and Geda spent a lot of time in Hall 6 plotting all sorts of trouble against the Moi dictatorship. Mudavadi had no clue, of course, his father was one of Moi’s key pillars. So we left him alone.

Mudavadi’s spokesperson Kibisu Kabatesi is another matter altogether.

Kibisu and I ended up in a prison cell at Industrial Area Remand Prison (INDA) after the 1982 coup attempt.

It was Kibisu, David Murathe, Onyango CA, Omoto ( we use to call him Ofire) me, and a bunch of our comrades in a prison cell in Block E. That is the worst place you can be in at INDA.

Oduor Ong’wen the current CEO of ODM was a few rooms away from us but we knew he had been sentenced to five years jail term and we passed our regards to him.

So in our room, we have a fight with the prison guards. I tell them the shit container is full and we need to go empty it in the latrine. They say it is too late. I tell them we have to empty it.

They refuse then I just pour it out of the door.

The Prison Guards go mad and invade our room. They ask who put the crap out. We don’t say anything. Then the Prison Guards pick Kibisu because he had dreadlocks. They said he must be the evil one.

Then I stood up and said it was me who emptied the whole thing because it had to be done.

The Guards take me to the Prison Chief and he declares me insane and I am taken to “Mwenda” Block at the prison.

The day we are released from prison in March 1983 my comrades say there is a guy in the “Mwenda” block. So they come and get me out.

The Mudavadi fiasco at Bomas tells you one thing. Fighting Raila can be very hard. Ask Ruto. He knows how tough that battle is.

Mudavadi promised Kenyans he will lower his earthquake on them and it turns out the whole thing was inviting William Ruto to take over ANC and give Mudavadi completely nothing. Some earthquake indeed.

In a way, this gives Azimio team one less headache. Mudavadi had insisted that the only way he was going to work with Raila in the Azimio movement is if he is nominated as the presidential candidate never mind that as the campaigns have been raging on, Mudavadi is pretty much in hiding.

So Ruto invades his party, takes it over so Mudavadi can now become a Ruto cheerleader and join the choir at Ruto’s Karen cathedral. Mudavadi is not going to be Ruto’s running mate and yet in Azimio, he didn’t even want to be a running mate to Raila.

Talk about selling yourself cheap. Mudavadi now holds the record. A politically dead Mudavadi is a gift to Azimio. It will free politicians from the region to build their own political parties and alliances and they are doing it as we speak.

At this point, Mudavadi may have to run for governor or maybe senate which he could actually lose because a lot of people in his own community are very mad with him.

The real earthquake that happened on Sunday is that many leaders in the ANC in the Luhya community are fleeing from Mudavadi. Nobody wants to be near that guy.

In 2013 Uhuru and Ruto toyed with Mudavadi like a tiny plaything. They summoned Mudavadi to a meeting and announced that they would give Mudavadi the presidential nomination and support him.

Mudavadi was super excited about that and then the two amigos threw Mudavadi under the bus and went ahead with their plans.

This time Mudavadi decided that instead of waiting for somebody to throw him under the bus he is doing it himself and he collected himself all week and when he saw the bus at Bomas he jumped right under it saving Ruto from the pleasure of doing that to him again.

So under the bus, Mudavadi will stay as he sees everyone running away from him in his own community. There is a sense of relief within the community that Mudavadi is no longer hanging around their necks. He is now on Ruto’s neck and good luck with that for both of them.

Marende explained that his intention to join ANC was halted after Mudavadi made a pact with Deputy President William Ruto who he termed as bad company.

Read: Former Speaker Marende, Teso MP dump Mudavadi for Raila’s Azimio

“From the latest action by Mudavadi, I feel betrayed. You can’t give Kenyans a progressive country if you associate with bad companies. As a result of the step by Mudavadi which is a bad step and suicidal politically. We shall leave him in the past,” said Marende.

The former Speaker who intends to vie for the Vihiga gubernatorial seat on the DAP-K ticket said he had no option but to leave Mudavadi behind.

“Am afraid that Ruto’s zone is a no-go zone. We had cautioned him not to associate with that company. Economic growth is not foreseeable with that company,” Marende stated.

The former speaker who is running for the governorship of Vihiga County referred to Mudavadi’s action as “suicide bombing”. Basically, you kill yourself to kill others. It is not a smart thing to do at all.

Right now if Mudavadi was to go head to head with Marende running for the governorship of Vihiga, since Mudavadi has nothing else to run for, Marende would beat him there.

DAP-K Deputy Party Leader Ayub Savula alleged that Mudavadi had been paid to get into a coalition with Ruto so as to facilitate the “auction of the Luyha votes.”

Savula stated the defections from ANC were a clear signal that Mudavadi will be forced to go it alone in the 2022 polls.

“Musalia you will walk alone without the Luyha community. We know the monies that Musalia was given to destroy the Luyha community. We will sweep the ANC house clean before 2022,” said Savula.

Party Secretary-General Eseli Simiyu while welcoming the defectors urged voters in the Western region to shun Mudavadi.

“I urge the people in Western not to listen to him every ten years because he is bound to make a blunder. People of western have no doubt that the route of UDA is not our option. We will associate with Azimio la Umoja,” said Simiyu.

Now here is a brilliant plan. This Ruto alliance with Mudavadi may be dead even before the elections are held. When it becomes obvious that Ruto is losing the presidential race to Raila Amolo Odinga, Mudavadi may want to jump out of that sinking ship.

That may be the time for Ruto to “Tosha” Mudavadi and get out of the race. Believe it or not that could be a winning ticket but Ruto being Ruto that will not happen and the two amigos will sink together and happily thereafter. That will be good for the country.

In the meantime, Mudavadi says he is running for the presidency. Maybe Kenya has two presidents at the same time. Ruto and Mudavadi and the deputy president will be Millicent Omanga. How grand is that?

Mudavadi has taken his headache to UDA. And poor Moses Wetangula is completely rubbished in this Ruto and Mudavadi confused alliance. Wetangula is not even an afterthought in the new arrangement.

I am running for presidency, nothing else- Mudavadi

Mudavadi said his party has given him only one mandate; bring the presidency home.

ANC leader Musalia Mudavadi says he is running for the presidential seat in the August 9, elections and nothing else, at least for now.

Speaking to KTN News on Monday evening, the ANC leader said his party has given him only one mandate; to bring the presidency home.

Mudavadi said even though he has opened a conversation with Deputy President William Ruto’s  UDA party, his eyes are firmly fixed on the top seat.

“The mandate that I was given by my ANC party is to run for the Presidency. The mandate is one and specific, to carry the presidential flag,” he said.

This comes a day after he launched his presidential bid at the Bomas of Kenya on Sunday where DP Ruto was also present.

The presence of the DP at the ANC party National Delegates Conference (NDC) sparked a huge debate about him deputizing Ruto in the August 9, elections considering that the DP has served his maximum term.

At the end of the day on August 9, 2022 Kenyans know their choice is between President Raila Odinga or President William Ruto. It is not going to be a hard choice for them. They know both those individuals very well because they have been in public politics for the last 30 years.

Adongo Ogony is a Human Rights Activist and a Writer who lives in Toronto, Canada