By Grace Wanja
Democracy for the Citizens Party (DCP) leader Rigathi Gachagua has issued a stark warning to President William Ruto that the unchecked spread of political violence across Kenya risks triggering a civil war, as evidence mounts of a deepening and troubling alliance between organised gangs and security forces.
Speaking at a rally in Kajiado yesterday, the former Deputy President directed his warning squarely at the Head of State, whose administration he accused of either enabling or deliberately ignoring a pattern of violence that has increasingly targeted opposition gatherings, religious institutions, and civic leaders. “Don’t create a situation where we will remove you from office,” Gachagua said, his tone measured but unambiguous. “If Matiangi, Kalonzo, Riggy Eugene and other leaders are injured, you will be removed from office. Don’t set this country into civil war.”
The warning did not arrive in a vacuum. It followed a Saturday rally in Kikuyu that descended into chaos — teargas, gunshots, and reported extortion of members of the public — after sections of the Southern Bypass and other major roads were blockaded by individuals who lit bonfires using tyres and placed obstacles across carriageways. Gachagua had written in advance to Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja requesting enhanced security, alleging in his letter that there were coordinated plans to disrupt the meeting through orchestrated violence designed to provoke police into action against his supporters. Those fears, he would later say, proved entirely well-founded.
What unfolded in Kikuyu was not an isolated incident. It was the latest chapter in a long and troubling story.
The use of hired muscle to disrupt political gatherings in Kenya predates independence, but its recent resurgence has taken on a more organised and brazen character. Churches — long regarded as sanctuaries beyond the reach of political interference — have not been spared. In several documented incidents over the past two years, congregants and clergy have reported the presence of intimidating individuals at services where opposition-aligned politicians were expected to speak or worship. In some cases, teargas has been deployed in the vicinity of church compounds, an act that has drawn condemnation from religious leaders across denominations.
The targeting of Senator Godfrey Osotsi of Vihiga, currently hospitalised following an attack, has sharpened the national conversation considerably. Osotsi, an opposition-aligned legislator, was among those assaulted in circumstances that critics argue bear the hallmarks of politically motivated violence. His hospitalisation has prompted calls from human rights organisations and opposition leaders for an independent investigation into who coordinated the attack and whether security personnel were complicit in allowing it to occur.
These incidents collectively point to what analysts describe as an emerging and dangerous arrangement — an unholy alliance between police and political goons that threatens to hollow out Kenya’s democratic architecture from within. Rather than dispersing or arresting the perpetrators of violence, security forces have in several documented cases deployed teargas against the victims: opposition supporters, worshippers, and ordinary citizens attempting to exercise constitutionally guaranteed rights of assembly and expression.
Gachagua, who has positioned himself as the principal opposition voice against the Ruto administration since his impeachment, did not mince his words about the government officials he holds responsible. “We are just being truthful because people like Murkomen won’t tell you the truth,” he said, referring to Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen, whom he accused of deliberately misrepresenting the scale and nature of political violence to the public. He went further, drawing ominous historical parallels that few Kenyan politicians have dared to invoke. “RSF war started this way. The Haitian crisis began this way — by their President. These gangs walking around will be a problem later,” he warned, adding that the goonism would ultimately “consume” the President himself.
Those comparisons, however dramatic, are not without analytical foundation. Political scientists who study democratic backsliding have consistently identified the co-optation of non-state armed actors by ruling governments as one of the earliest and most reliable warning signs of accelerating authoritarianism. When the state outsources violence to gangs while simultaneously directing its formal security apparatus against legitimate opposition activity, the rule of law does not merely weaken — it inverts. Citizens find themselves unprotected from the forces nominally aligned with those in power, while being actively policed for the act of peaceful dissent.
Kikuyu MP John Ichung’wah offered a sharply different reading of events. In a letter dated April 10, 2026, he accused Gachagua of engaging in a deliberate effort to destabilise his constituency through hate speech and the mobilisation of criminal gangs, laying responsibility for the Saturday violence directly at the former Deputy President’s feet. The claim added another layer of contestation to an already volatile political environment, illustrating how thoroughly the narrative around political violence in Kenya has become weaponised by all sides.
Yet the pattern of incidents — churches disrupted, senators hospitalised, rallies teargassed, roads blockaded — does not easily resolve into a story of mutual provocation. It describes a systematic targeting of spaces and individuals associated with opposition politics, carried out with a consistency and impunity that strongly suggests coordination rather than spontaneity.
Kenya has been here before. The post-election violence of 2007 and 2008, which claimed more than 1,300 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands, began not with a single catastrophic event but with the gradual normalisation of political intimidation, the hardening of ethnic mobilisation, and the failure of institutions to hold perpetrators accountable at the early stages. The country spent years, and enormous political capital, rebuilding the trust that was destroyed in those months.
Gachagua’s civil war warning may be intended partly as political theatre. But the underlying conditions he is describing — unchecked goons, a compromised police force, targeted violence against religious and civic spaces, and a government that appears either unable or unwilling to act — are not imaginary. They are documented, witnessed, and worsening.
Kenya can still choose a different course. But that choice requires political will, institutional integrity, and a security apparatus that serves the constitution rather than the convenience of those in power.
Right now, the evidence suggests all three are in dangerously short supply.
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