Embakasi East MP Babu Owino has confirmed that he will contest the Nairobi gubernatorial seat in 2027 with or without the backing of his party, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).
Facing internal headwinds within ODM and aware of competing interests for the party’s ticket, the second-term legislator says he is prepared to go it alone, even as an independent candidate, if necessary.
Despite his political fallout with the ODM establishment partly due to his open criticism of the broad-based government arrangement, Mr Owino insists his respect for ODM leader Raila Odinga remains unwavering.
Babu Owino
Photo credit: Billy Ogada | Nation Media Group
“I know ODM may not give me the ticket because Johnson Sakaja was endorsed at the Bomas of Kenya,” Mr Owino said in an interview with the Daily Nation .
“But I love Baba (Raila Odinga). I know that I will not be given the ticket, but it doesn’t matter because I know it’s the citizens who vote.”
“I am criticising the broad-based government because it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “As a leader, I can’t see wrong and support it in a public forum — not even in private.”
Mr Owino also downplayed the fact that he has not been assigned any parliamentary committee position.
“If Babu has not been given anything in the committee, there is no problem. What I am carrying is bigger than that,” he said.
The lawmaker, who was first elected in 2017 on an ODM ticket, says his political growth is rooted on his own merit, dating back to his days as a student leader at the University of Nairobi.
“Babu Owino is an institution,” he declared.
While acknowledging Mr Odinga’s democratic right to support any candidate, he maintains this does not diminish his loyalty to the ODM leader.
“In a family set-up, a father can love one child more than another, but that can’t make me bitter with my father or hate him. He is Baba. He is someone I have always believed in,” Mr Owino said.
At the same time, the MP launched a scathing attack on Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja, accusing him of poor leadership, financial mismanagement and presiding over a county that is “governed in disregard of the rule of law.”
“This governor will be impeached by Kenyans at the ballot,” he said. “I will be remembered as someone who changed lives for the better — someone who took children to school, built roads, and created jobs for Nairobians.”
He accused the governor of failing to implement key oversight recommendations, including the delayed tabling of an ad hoc committee report on the revenue system and declining revenue collections more than a year later.
“The DCI should investigate the governor and the EACC should prosecute him for misappropriation of public funds. But because politically, he is dining with the high and mighty, the sky is holding him,” said Mr Owino.
With the battle for City Hall heating up, Mr Owino has now positioned himself as a candidate of defiance, promising to take on entrenched interests and restore what he calls Nairobi’s “lost glory.”
