By Anderson Ojwang
The illusive Luhya Unity has opened the rich vote block up for grabs with the region turning up as the political interest zone ahead of the 2027 general elections.
For aeons, successive leaders from the Luhya community have grappled with unity for the region but all the attempts have come cropper ahead of the general election.
If anything, the Luhya community has turned out as a fertile cradle land for Presidential candidates from other regions seeking votes to win the presidency.
The Luhya land from the inception of multiparty politics has failed to rally behind the two presidential candidates, the late Wamalwa Kijana in 1the 997 election and Musalia Mudavadi in 2013.
In the 1997 election, Wamalwa was the leader of FORD-K, which was then viewed as the Luhya party and had a national outlook but still performed dismally in Luhya land and the rest of the country.
Wamalwa managed to score the highest percentage of votes in the Luhya-dominated Western Kenya garnering 48.2 per cent of the vote against Moi’s 44.9 per cent.
But this performance compared to how other candidates performed in their region could be viewed as dismal because he lost most of the votes to the outsiders.
Moi got strong Kalenjin backing securing 69.5 per cent of the votes in the Kalenjin-dominated but cosmopolitan Rift Valley while Kibaki, in the absence of Matiba, scored 89.4 per cent of the votes in the Kikuyu-dominated Central Kenya.
Raila Odinga, under NDP, garnered 56.8 per in the Luo-dominated Nyanza province which has a sizeable Kisii population in addition to the Kuria while Charity Ngilu secured 33.6 per cent in Eastern province mostly from her Kambaland backyard.
It is instructive to note that the Kalenjin, the Kikuyu and the Luo put their votes in one basket behind their “sons” while the Luhya divided their vote between Wamalwa’s FORD-K and Moi’s KANU while the Kamba divided their votes between Ngilu’s Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Moi’s KANU.
In the 2013 Presidential election, Mudavadi performed dismally in all the five Luhya-dominated counties of Busia, Bungoma, Vihiga, Kakamega and Trans Nzoia and only defeated Raila by a meagre 5000 votes in his Vihiga county backyard.
Out of the 14,376,284 registered voters, Mudavadi only managed a paltry of 483,981 of which he received 353864 from the Luhyaland while Raila garnered 755625 votes in western Kenya.
In Central province, Uhuru Kenyatta received 1895075 votes in his backyard while Raila got 1508776 from Nyanza.
In Kakamega county, Raila received 64 percent against Mudavadi’s 30 percent while in Busia county Raila got 86 percent against Mudavadi’s 8 percent. In Bungoma, Raila received 53 percent against Mudavadi’s 31 percent while in Vihiga Mudavadi won by 49 percent against Raila’s 46 percent.
The dismal performance of presidential candidates from the Luhya community has been attributed to the sub-tribe rivalry between the two dominant ones mainly the Bukusu and the Maragoli.
Bukusu-dominated strongholds are Bungoma and Trans-Nzoia counties while Kakamega, Vihiga and Busia are dominated by other non-Bukusu sub-tribes of the Luhya.
Currently, the luhyaland has been turned into a battleground between President William Ruto against his opponents, the impeached deputy president Rigathi Gachagua, Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka and two sons of the soil Trans Nzoia Governor George Natembeya and DAP-K leader Eugene Wamalwa.
Natembeya of the Tawe movement is coming out as the political fulcrum of the region after Mudavadi merged his Amani National Congress (ANC) with President Ruto’s UDA party.
Speaker Moses Wetangula’s Ford-K-led party is wobbling and facing a rough future from other political groupings from the region.
President Ruto has been traversing the Western region with loads of goodies to whip and woo the Luhya community into his political basket ahead of the 2027 elections.
His team includes the newly appointed cabinet secretary and former Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) deputy party leader Wycliffe Oparanya, Mudavadi, Wetangula and Secretary General of COTU Mr., Francis Atwal..
“ The President’s tour of Western Kenya was purely developmental. During the last general election, we made a conscious decision to go in one direction and to support Ruto as our presidential candidate and we still support him to date.
Musalia and I resolved to support Ruto in the last general election but some people laughed at us. We stood on the ground and we saw far. We formed the government and in Bungoma County, we have three permanent secretaries in the government.
Ruto has toured every part of the villages of Western Kenya. Bungoma County, you gave Ruto the presidency and you will still support him.
We as a region, President Ruto, this is your frontier of last defence. We will move together with you,” Wetangula said.
Speaking in Bungoma Ruto said Kenyans are united and must reject leaders who preach about shareholding, tribalism and hatred and that they have no political space in the country.
And stung by Ruto’s overtures to the Luhya community, Rigathi warned the residents of Western Kenya to be wary of the president lest he betray them just like he did to the people of Mt Kenya.
“ I want to tell the people of western Kenya to be very careful and learn from us. The president was here for five years, spending six days a week in the Mt Kenya region, and that is how he convinced us to vote for him. You are just being wooed the same way he wooed us. He was in every village here and knew every road by name. But now, he has disappeared because the people of Mt Kenya know him and know that he conned us. We have seen that script before,” he said.
Natembeya and Wetangula have in the recent past engaged in supremacy battle over the control of Western Kenya which has often turned confrontational and violent on various incidences.
In his X handle formerly Twitter Natembeya wrote “ in their own wisdom Musalia and Wetangula have invited the president to launch a transformer in Bungoma, Wakishiba hawasumbuli (if they are at their fill they don’t disturb,”.
“ANC members from Western Kenya have refuted claims of Musalia Mudavadi merging with UDA. Citing they were not consulted. It’s imperative to note that our people won’t be auctioned by egocentric politicians. Our numerical strength must count,” he wrote.
