Former Nyeri Town MP Ngunjiri Wambugu has seized on the Political Parties Disputes Tribunal ruling against Jubilee Party Secretary-General Koitalel Ole Kenta to reopen a much larger question on who ultimately controls the party as Kenya heads towards the 2027 elections.
In a combative post on Tuesday, Wambugu portrayed the ruling not as a quarrel over an office but as a warning against handing Jubilee’s institutional machinery to political forces he accuses of seeking to capture the party.
He placed former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua at the centre of that contest, accusing him of having previously attempted to take over Jubilee through executive power and warning that similar efforts could succeed if the party ignores its own constitution and procedures.
“Jubilee belongs to its members,” Wambugu said, arguing that consequential decisions on the party’s leadership and direction must be made transparently and within the law.
His intervention gives the PPDT decision a distinctly political afterlife.
The tribunal’s finding that Kenta was not a registered Jubilee member when he was appointed secretary-general provided Wambugu with a concrete example of what he describes as the danger of shortcuts in the management of the party.
Wambugu believes the ongoing dispute is therefore bigger than Kenta and more of whether Jubilee can withstand another attempt at political capture at a moment when Kenya’s opposition and former governing parties are being reorganised around the 2027 succession.
Wambugu recalled Gachagua’s tenure as Deputy President, alleging that executive power was used in 2023 in an attempt to wrest Jubilee from retired President Uhuru Kenyatta and linked the failure of that effort to Gachagua’s impeachment in September 2024.
Wambugu also invokes Gachagua’s description of Jubilee as a “red wheelbarrow” and his alleged labelling of opponents as “moles”.
