Kenya has many amazing towns, many in rural settings, with their peculiarities, but few are as amazing as Ol Kalou, which is both big and small.
It is smaller than Nyahururu, which cannot make up its mind as to whether it is in Laikipia or Nyandarua County, and bigger than other constituencies in terms of national political impact.
It overlooks the colonial ‘Happy Valley’ and is the capital of Nyandarua County, which hosts many remnants of the Mau Mau War.
It is also a political weathervane which occasionally attracts national attention and it attracted big attention in July because of a highly symbolic by-election which stopped being an Ol Kalou affair and turned into an open political referendum into President William Ruto’s UDA and Oburu Oginga’s ODM coalition government.
With Oburu advising Ruto to exercise ‘benevolent dictatorship’, the implied verdict, felt across the country, was that people reject the Ruto-Oburu "broad-based" government.
The star of the political show, it appeared, was John Methu, the singing bearded senator from Nyandarua. Methu had attracted attention, despite efforts to silence him, by telling Ruto “Mimi Sikuogopi” during the funeral service for former Ol Kalou MP David Njuguna Kiaraho which occasioned the by-election.
Although Methu’s candidate, an equally bearded Sammy Kamau Ngotho, thumped his rivals into admitting solid defeat, the story was elsewhere. Bearded Methu and Kamau were simply symbolic of the political tide that seemingly rejected Ruto and his many promises.
It was not the first time that voters in Nyandarua had embarrassed or become painful thorns to the government.
Back in 1974 when Ol Kalou was part of the Nyandarua North Constituency, former Mau Mau Detainee Josiah Mwangi Kariuki, best known as JM, and titular head of the National Youth Service, had embarrassed Jomo Kenyatta’s government by winning the election big without campaigning.
His simple messages, complaining about a few millionaires in the midst of millions of beggars, resonated with the public locally and nationally so much that power mandarins sought to contain him.
He died in 1975 and entered the heavenly world of perpetual legends. JM’s “spirit” of defiance, Historian John Kamau believes, left a belief that “a voter could judge power without seeking permission from the state ... [and] crossed the old constituency boundary into Kipipiri” in 1995.
In a by-election, Daniel arap Moi’s KANU government sought to show it still had power in the Mountain zone by seducing voters with massive display of potential ‘development’ goodies for Kipipiri, which included electric poles, should voters vote KANU.
Voters ignored the ‘bribe’ and chose DP’s Paul Githiomi Mwangi, after which the embarrassed Moi government removed its ‘Maendeleo’. Roughly 31 years later, that JM spirit of defiance embarrassed Moi’s political heir, Ruto, who adopted the same ‘Maendeleo’ strategy in Ol Kalou only to fall flat on his political face.
The by-election was different from the JM election in 1974 and the 1995 Kipipiri one in that the 2026 Ol Kalou by-election was a clear contest between government related use of force and while people use of the power of reason and common sense to protect perceived interests through the vote.
In 1974 and 1995, there was general trust that the announced results would reflect the collective will of the voters, and they did. In 2026, however, doubts crept into the minds of the people who, having witnessed supposed ‘goons’ repeatedly run wild to cause socio-political havoc at times in the company of uniformed police, decided to use people power rather than to rely on government promises and forces to protect votes.
The decision supposedly arose from the experience in the Mbeere North by-election where other than the usual government largesse to voters, lights in counting stations had seemingly disappeared as Public Service CS Godfrey Ruku reportedly did ‘something’ to ensure that the UDA candidate was declared the winner.
The impression in Ol Kalou that the government had used force in Mbeere North informed the Ol Kalou decision to use people power to avoid a repeat of the Mbeere North experience. It worked so well that other parts of the country are contemplating repeating the vote protection vigilance that Ol Kalou displayed.
The Ol Kalou contest, therefore, was not about Ol Kalou; it was a national political contest between government force and people power, and it had both positive and negative effects.
Since government forces lost to the power of reason and common sense, government critics were thrilled, emboldened, and energized across the country. They took Ol Kalou as the template on how to safeguard votes. They jubilated with Wiper Leader and presidential hopeful Kalonzo Musyoka declaring that people had rejected Ruto.
The men who were especially vocal in declaring Ruto’s political days numbered were Ruto’s former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua and rising leader of Linda Mwananchi Movement Edwin Sifuna. Each of the three opposition leaders would like to take Ruto’s job.
Ruto is seemingly receptive to his ally Oburu’s advice to exercise benevolent dictatorship and although he rose to office through building strategic political coalitions, he does not want others to unite. He argues, “We have bad politics of alliances, victimization and hate.”
The Ol Kalou outcome had a negative effect on, and rattled, the UDA/ODM broad-based governing coalition. Its operatives sounded incoherent as one group tried to downplay the evident political blow while another called for a return to the drawing board to assess the damage.
While Deputy President Kithure Kindiki and Bungoma Governor Ken Lusaka considered Ol Kalou a wake-up call for Ruto, two CSs denied the damage and appeared to repeat the 1950s colonial policies of villainizing the Kikuyu people.
Public Service CS Ruku from Embu, for instance, showed his mastery of colonial anti-Kikuyu policies of separating the Meru and Embu from the bad Kikuyu. Saying he wanted nothing to do with the Kikuyu, he decreed that the people of Mount Kenya East had separated from those in Mount Kenya West.
In contrast, Kindiki toned down his pre-voting bellicosity and denounced Ruku’s divisive utterances. Health CS Aden Duale sounded like Ruku in dismissing the Ol Kalou as not consequential and in displaying Kikuyu phobia.
After Duale reportedly called the Kikuyu “hyenas” to be hunted down and denied office, pro-Ruto Kirinyaga Governor Anne Waiguru accused Duale of verbal carelessness while Narok Senator Ole Kina warned of attempts to drag Kenya back to the crisis of 2007.
Like UDA Secretary General Omar Hassan Sarai’s previous anti-Kikuyu outburst in front of Ruto, Duale’s claim that he had been misunderstood sounded hollow.
The Ol Kalou by-election was more than itself, creating excitement and anguish for Ruto’s UDA. With Lawyer Ahmednassir Abdillahi advising Ruto to dump Kindiki and the Mountain and to “act like the political fox you always have been, pick a Luo or a Luhya running mate,” Kindiki’s job might go to the Luhya because the Luo are still waiting for ‘Juogi’ to replace ‘Raila’.
As Ruto allies Oburu and Junet Mohammed demand Ol Kalou-like material and financial ‘goodies’ to Luo land, the torch shines on the Luhya possibly to undercut Sifuna’s movement. The challenge to ‘Fox’ Ruto, however, is in exploiting the egos of each of the overconfident opposition prima donnas to continue undermining each other.
Ol Kalou has shown that people can protect their interests if government proves unreliable and has become a political template on how to anticipate and deflate disruptive forces. Many would like to emulate Ol Kalou’s amazing success in 2027.
