The Rift Valley is not Ruto’s anymore — and DCP is making sure everyone knows it
Nyandarua Senator John Methu led a Democracy for the Citizens Party delegation into Nakuru County
From a church in Solai to the streets of Bahati, Senator Methu is writing a new political map of Nakuru — one rally at a time
By Kamande Muchiri
Nyandarua Senator John Methu led a Democracy for the Citizens Party delegation into Nakuru County yesterday, holding a church service in Solai before conducting two successive public rallies in Bahati Constituency — at Maili Kumi at 2:30pm and Maili Sita at 4pm — in the most sustained and organised opposition push yet into territory President William Ruto has long considered his own.
The significance of what happened in Bahati cannot be separated from what has happened there before. In July 2025, heavily armed anti-riot police erected barricades along the Nyahururu-Nakuru road at Kwa Kahiga, lobbing teargas canisters at DCP leaders and their supporters to prevent rallies from taking place in the same Bahati and Subukia constituencies. The convoy was forced through the blockade. Then, on 14 August 2026, Gachagua’s motorcade was attacked in Nakuru Town West, with photographs showing several Land Cruisers with shattered windscreens and rear windows. Naivasha MP Jayne Kihara condemned the attack and asked why the government was allegedly disrupting opposition gatherings.
And yet yesterday, DCP came back. DCP Secretary for Planning Peter Mbae had announced the return in a defiant statement on 2 September: “Nakuru, we are back to Subukia and Bahati that Rigathi Gachagua was not able to cover last time. One step at a time. DCP Siku Zombo.” The phrase — DCP is unstoppable — has become the party’s rallying cry in contested terrain, and Nakuru is among the most contested terrain in Kenya ahead of the August 2027 general election.
Nakuru is the third-largest county in Kenya by population and sits at the heart of President Ruto’s Rift Valley base. It is governed by Susan Kihika, a UDA loyalist who has been emphatic in her support for the President. “I will not leave Ruto for Wamonyoro, never,” Kihika declared at a Bahati constituency event during Madaraka Day celebrations in June. She subsequently led a delegation of over 1,000 elected leaders and business figures to State House to reaffirm that loyalty. On paper, Nakuru should be settled ground for Kenya Kwanza.
It is not. The fissures running through Nakuru politics are deep, and DCP has been systematically widening them. The party’s Nakuru County Secretary-General, Simon Ole Nasieku, issued a stark warning to Members of the County Assembly who voted to impeach Bahati MCA Ngware Ng’ang’a, who had been removed as Deputy Speaker after criticising the 2025/26 Finance Bill. “Anyone on the list of these MCAs who decide to impeach Ngware should forget about vying for a DCP ticket in 2027,” Ole Nasieku said. It was a declaration that DCP intends to contest local seats in Nakuru, not merely show up for the presidential race.
That layered strategy — disrupting county politics while building a national profile — is what makes the Bahati rallies more than headline noise. Methu, who serves as DCP’s Secretary-General designate, has been running the party’s ground operation since Gachagua departed for the United States on 26 August 2026, embarking on a 50-day diaspora tour. Deputy party leader Cleophas Malala and Methu were specifically tasked with keeping the party’s mobilisation engine running in his absence. The Nakuru tour followed meet-the-people engagements in Laikipia, and before that, a CBD rally in Nairobi. DCP is moving fast and moving wide.
On the ground in Nakuru, the political arithmetic that has long defined the county — a compact between the Kikuyu and Kalenjin communities, forged through the Kenya Kwanza alliance — is showing visible strain. Political analysts have noted that the divisions within that alliance are widening ahead of 2027, with Gachagua’s DCP aggressively targeting Kikuyu voters in the Rift Valley who feel alienated by the current administration. Methu, himself from Nyandarua, has been direct about this. “There are people misleading the President that Nakuru is firmly behind him just because he hails from the Rift Valley,” he said at a previous DCP rally in the county. The message is calculated: Nakuru, for all its symbolism as Ruto’s regional heartland, is not monolithic.
At the national level, the Nakuru rallies are one piece of a broader opposition mobilisation that, on Sunday alone, saw the United Alternative Government also deploying into Nyeri County — where Kalonzo Musyoka and Democratic Party leader Justin Muturi held a church service at St Paul’s ACK Church in Othaya and a subsequent public rally, having chosen the political home constituency of Gachagua himself as their venue. Across the country, multiple opposition flanks were moving simultaneously: DCP in the Rift Valley, the UAG in Central Kenya, and Gachagua himself working the Kenyan diaspora in Washington State. The coordination, whether deliberate or coincidental, created the unmistakable impression of an opposition that has found its operational rhythm less than a year before the election.
The countdown is unambiguous. Kenya goes to the polls on 10 August 2027, a constitutional requirement embedded in the 2010 charter. That gives Methu, Malala, and whoever eventually carries the opposition presidential ticket roughly eleven months to convert Sunday crowds in Bahati into election-day turnout. The opposition’s central challenge — consolidating behind a single candidate from a crowded field that includes Gachagua, Kalonzo, Muturi, Martha Karua, Fred Matiang’i, and former Chief Justice David Maraga — remains unresolved, and its resolution will determine whether all this grassroots energy ultimately coheres or dissipates.
But what Sunday demonstrated in Nakuru is that DCP is not waiting for that resolution before expanding its territory. It is planting flags in places it was previously teargas-cleared from and returning to roads its convoys were stoned on, with the same green wave it launched from Gachagua’s impeachment and has been building ever since.
Nakuru has been told to expect DCP back in Subukia, Kabazi, Lanet Umoja, and Dundori. Ole Nasieku warned the MCAs. Methu warned the government. And on Sunday, several thousand people turned out in Bahati to hear the message for themselves.
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