Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna.
As Oburu Oginga tightens his grip, Edwin Sifuna keeps rising — and the party’s war on dissent may be backfiring
By MKT Reporter
The Orange Democratic Movement has stripped Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna and Vihiga Senator Godfrey Osotsi of their Senate committee seats, the latest in a series of moves by acting party leader Oburu Oginga’s establishment to silence dissenting voices and consolidate control ahead of the 2027 General Election.
The changes, pending approval by the Senate House Business Committee, would see Sifuna ejected from the Senate County Public Accounts Committee — one of the legislature’s most powerful oversight bodies, with authority to scrutinise how county governments spend public funds — and reassigned to the comparatively low-profile Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries Committee. Kilifi Senator and Senate Minority Leader Stewart Madzayo is expected to fill his vacancy. Osotsi was removed from the Senate County Public Investments and Special Funds Committee through a vote of no confidence and will be moved to the Trade, Industrialisation and Tourism Committee, with Taita Taveta Senator Johannes Mwaruma stepping in.
Madzayo defended the reshuffle as procedural and unrelated to the party’s internal political tensions. Few observers took that argument seriously.
The Senate purge is the most visible chapter yet in a systematic campaign that began the moment Raila Odinga died. When the former Prime Minister succumbed to a heart attack in India on 15 October 2025, ODM lost the one figure whose authority had kept its competing factions in disciplined coexistence for two decades. Into that vacuum stepped Oginga, Raila’s elder brother, appointed by the National Executive Council as interim party leader. What followed was a swift and methodical effort to reshape ODM in the image of its new leadership — and to remove those who refused to fall in line.
Sifuna was the most prominent target. As secretary-general for nearly nine years, he had positioned himself as the custodian of Raila’s opposition legacy, and he made no secret of his contempt for ODM’s accommodation of President William Ruto’s broad-based government. He questioned the Memorandum of Understanding signed between Ruto and Raila in March 2025, demanded that ODM field its own presidential candidate in 2027 and repeatedly embarrassed the establishment with public broadsides against the cooperation deal. The party’s response was to charge him with indiscipline.
On 11 February 2026, ODM’s National Executive Committee removed Sifuna as secretary-general with immediate effect at a meeting in Mombasa, citing indiscipline and violations of party protocol. Busia Woman Representative Catherine Omanyo was appointed to act in the role. Sifuna refused to accept the decision. “I have taken note of the announcement made by a section of the ODM NEC purporting to remove me from the position of secretary-general,” he said the following day. “This month marks the beginning of my ninth year as secretary-general of ODM — the longest-serving individual in that position. I have served this party with loyalty, diligence and unwavering commitment.” He described the removal as unlawful and said he had never been informed of any disciplinary proceedings against him.
The senior voices who had warned against such a move were ignored. Siaya Governor James Orengo had cautioned as early as January 2026 that ODM would not survive if some members succeeded in pushing Sifuna out, accusing unnamed factions of undermining the party for personal gain and warning against betrayal of ODM’s founding principles. The establishment pressed ahead regardless, calculating that institutional control would ultimately trump popular sentiment.
That calculation has not aged well. Rather than diminishing Sifuna, each act of exclusion has amplified him. Linda Mwananchi — the citizen-funded movement he championed, built on small public donations from ordinary Kenyans — grew into a genuine political force with a speed that caught ODM’s hierarchy off guard. A May 2026 TIFA Research survey found 73 percent of ODM supporters backing Sifuna’s Linda Mwananchi faction, against just 24 percent for the rival Linda Ground camp aligned with Oginga. Among ODM supporters who oppose the government cooperation deal, the split ran even sharper — 90 percent backing Sifuna’s camp.
The numbers tell a story the committee reshuffles cannot change. ODM’s establishment controls the party machinery. Sifuna controls the party’s base. That is a dangerous gap for any political organisation to sustain heading into an election year, and some within ODM are beginning to say so privately. Several senior figures now concede that firing Sifuna as secretary-general was a miscalculation — that it freed him from the constraints of party office and gave him the moral authority of a man punished for his principles.
Stripping him of his Senate committee seat follows the same logic that produced that miscalculation. By removing Sifuna from the County Public Accounts Committee, the establishment eliminates a platform from which he could generate high-profile oversight battles and accountability headlines — precisely the kind of political oxygen that has powered his rise. The move is tactically coherent. Whether it is strategically wise is another matter entirely.
Kenya’s political history offers a clear lesson: leaders who grow stronger the more they are pushed to the margins are the most dangerous opponents of all. Oginga’s ODM has spent the better part of nine months pushing Sifuna. The polling, the fundraising momentum and the crowds at Linda Mwananchi rallies suggest the pushing has not had the intended effect.
The committee changes must still clear the Senate House Business Committee before taking effect. Sifuna has given no indication he intends to accept them quietly. And if the trajectory of the past nine months is any guide, ODM’s next move against him may only make him stronger.
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