This man Kindiki: Second in command but first in the shadow
National
By
Prestone Murunga
| Aug 30, 2026
The resignation of Tanzania’s Vice-President Emmanuel Nchimbi has done more than create a vacancy at the top of the country’s executive.
It has reopened a bigger and uncomfortable question across East Africa: what does it really mean to be the second-in-command when political power remains firmly concentrated in the hands of the President?
Nchimbi’s abrupt departure is perhaps the clearest illustration yet. The 54-year-old announced that he would leave office on September 4, less than a year after being sworn in alongside President Samia Suluhu Hassan.
In a brief resignation message, Nchimbi said he had become convinced that the President wanted change and that he had decided to honour a promise he made to her.
“I have become convinced, without doubt, that the president wants changes, and I have therefore decided to fulfil my promise.”
The wording is striking. Nchimbi did not accuse Samia of wrongdoing. He did not publicly declare a political disagreement. Instead, he presented his departure as an act of loyalty to the President and the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party.
Yet his resignation comes after weeks of speculation about tensions between the two leaders and shortly after he made unusually strong calls for constitutional reform.
On July 24, Nchimbi told the Tanzania Human Rights Defenders Coalition that Tanzanians should fight for a new Constitution, arguing that such a document could address concerns over human rights, governance, democracy and justice.
“If I were given the chance to tell Tanzanians just one thing, I would tell them: ‘Fight to get a new constitution.’”
He went further, arguing that the Constitution could become the vehicle through which many of the country’s competing demands were addressed.
“You must choose the single major thing that can carry everything in the country. It is the Constitution.”
His comments were politically significant because they came from a sitting Vice-President, not an opposition politician or civil society activist. Reuters reports that his constitutional reform advocacy had generated controversy within CCM, although the government has not officially given a reason for his resignation.
That is where Tanzania’s story begins to resemble developments much closer to home.
In Kenya, Deputy President Kithure Kindiki is not facing resignation. President William Ruto has not announced plans to remove him. But Kindiki is increasingly finding himself in another kind of battle: a fight over whether the office he occupies will remain his in the next political arrangement.
The difference is important. While Nchimbi appears to have left after President Samia indicated that she wanted a change, Kindiki is having to publicly insist that there is no change to make.
His position has come under the spotlight as ODM pushes for the Deputy President’s slot in the political negotiations surrounding the 2027 election. ODM leaders have floated the possibility of Wycliffe Oparanya becoming Ruto’s running mate, while allies of Kindiki have pushed back against the proposal.
Kindiki himself has now entered the fight.
“Those who are after a seat should know the position of the Deputy President is not vacant. Someone is already occupying it and he is fully on it on behalf of the people of Kenya.”
It is an unusually revealing statement from a man occupying the country’s second-highest office. The Deputy President is constitutionally entrenched, but politically, the question of who occupies that office in the next government is already being negotiated around him.
Kindiki is therefore fighting a battle that is different from Nchimbi’s but connected to the same question: how much security does the second-in-command really have?
His allies have also been forced to defend the office. Public Service Cabinet Secretary Geoffrey Ruku recently warned ODM against treating the Deputy President’s position as vacant, saying there would be no vacancy in 2027.
Kindiki has consequently found himself in an unusual position. He is serving as Ruto’s deputy, helping defend the administration and campaigning for its re-election, yet political actors outside his camp are already discussing his replacement before the election has even taken place.
That makes the office of Deputy President look less like a permanent political possession and more like one of the biggest bargaining chips in Kenya’s coalition politics.
The irony is that Kindiki occupies an office that is supposed to be second only to the President, but he is having to fight to convince political actors that the seat is not theirs to distribute.
The experience of Rigathi Gachagua makes the situation even more complicated.
Gachagua entered office in 2022 as one of the most politically consequential figures in Ruto’s administration, having helped consolidate support for the President in Mount Kenya.
But the relationship deteriorated dramatically. Gachagua complained that he was being sidelined and excluded from important government decisions. His disagreements with the administration eventually became so serious that Parliament removed him from office in 2024.
Now Kindiki occupies the same constitutional office, but the political environment around it remains fluid.
The lesson from the two men is not necessarily that the Deputy President’s office is weak. On paper, it is extremely powerful. The problem is that its political strength depends heavily on the relationship between the President and his deputy, the deputy’s political base and the President’s willingness to give the office meaningful space.
A deputy can be constitutionally powerful and politically vulnerable at the same time. That is the contradiction at the heart of East Africa’s second-in-command.
Uganda presents an even more intriguing version of the problem.
Vice-President Jessica Alupo occupies the country’s second-highest constitutional office. But when Ugandans look beyond President Yoweri Museveni and ask who could eventually occupy State House, the conversation increasingly centres on someone who does not hold the vice-presidency.
That person is Museveni’s son, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba. On Wednesday, August 26, the succession question became considerably more explicit.
Muhoozi announced that he would run for president in 2031 and said he expected to have his father’s support.
“I will stand for the highest office in the land in 2031. And we will win by the grace of Almighty God.”
In another post, he said:
“With my great father, Mzee’s, support I will get 90% in the elections in 2031.”
Reuters reports that Muhoozi has long been viewed as a potential successor to his father, who has ruled Uganda since 1986.
That creates perhaps the most striking contrast in this regional comparison: the constitutional number two is not necessarily the political number two.
Alupo may occupy the vice-presidency, but the succession conversation is increasingly revolving around Muhoozi. That does not mean Museveni has formally designated his son as his successor. Nor does it mean Alupo is engaged in a political dispute with the President.
It simply demonstrates how political proximity to the President can sometimes matter more than constitutional rank when questions of succession arise. Muhoozi’s declaration comes on the same day that Tanzania is searching for a replacement for a Vice-President who has suddenly announced his departure.
These three cases should not be treated as identical.
There is no evidence that Nchimbi resigned specifically because of his constitutional reform remarks. There is no evidence that Kindiki is about to be removed from office, and there is no evidence that Alupo is fighting Museveni.
But together, they reveal something about East African politics that is difficult to ignore.
The person immediately below the President occupies an extraordinarily powerful but extraordinarily delicate position.
In Tanzania, Nchimbi’s resignation shows how quickly the relationship can collapse when the President decides that change is necessary. In Kenya, Kindiki’s experience shows how the office can become a bargaining chip in coalition politics even while its occupant is still serving. And in Uganda, Alupo’s position demonstrates that being Vice-President does not automatically make one the most obvious successor when the President’s family and political network have their own succession dynamics.
Perhaps that is the real paradox.
The Vice-President or Deputy President is close enough to power to inherit the presidency if circumstances demand it, but not always powerful enough to determine the political circumstances under which that succession happens.
Perhaps, therefore, the real question is not whether East Africa’s second-in-command is powerful.
It is whether the second-in-command can ever become powerful independently of the person who made him second.