The four candidates Kenyans will choose from in Uhuru succession contest

On Tuesday, August 8, 2022, Kenyans will be casting their votes to choose leaders who will occupy political offices in the next five years.

In the presidential race, Kenyans will one of the four candidates who are contesting to succeed President Uhuru Kenyatta who has served his two five-year terms.

William Samoei Ruto

Dr William Ruto is the current Deputy President in the Jubilee administration and the leader of the United Democratic Alliance party, on whose ticket he is contesting the presidency under the Kenya Kwanza Alliance.

Born in Sugoi, Uasin Gishu, in 1966, Dr Ruto began his schooling at Kamagut Primary before joining Wareng Secondary. He later proceeded to Kapsabet Boys High School for his A-level education.

Dr Ruto attended the University of Nairobi, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Botany and Zoology in 1990, before attaining his Master of Science and PhD in 2011 and 2018 respectively from the same institution.

After serving as MP for Eldoret North from 1997, Dr Ruto ran in 2013 General Election as the running mate of Uhuru Kenyatta. They won the election and he became the first Deputy President under the 2010 Constitution. In October 2014, he served as acting President when Mr Kenyatta briefly relinquished power to attend to his criminal case at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

In 2011, Dr Ruto was named as one of the six individuals who had sponsored the 2007/08 post-election violence. Like with other post-election violence cases at The Hague, his case, however, collapsed because of insufficient evidence orchestrated by alleged witness tampering and failure by the ICC prosecutor’s office. Dr Ruto was a founding member of the Youth for Kanu 1992 (YK92), a group that campaigned for former President Daniel Moi in the 1992 General Election.

As MP, he served as an assistant minister in the Office of the President and then towards the 2002 election, which Kanu lost, he was promoted to Minister for Home Affairs. He also served as Minister for Agriculture and Higher Education in the grand coalition government from 2008.

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David Mwaure Waihiga

Mr David Mwaure Waihiga of the Agano Party is a lawyer and has vied in previous elections for MP, senator and governor.

He also tried his hand in the contest for the presidency in the 2013 General Election. He, however, quit the race and vied for Lamu governor.

His most recent attempt at an elective position was in 2021 when he received the green-light from his party to contest the Nairobi governor seat after Mike Sonko was impeached. No election was, however, held.

He had also tried in 2011 to contest the Kamkunji MP seat after the High Court nullified the win of Simon Mbugua (UDA’s candidate for the Starehe MP race). He lost the bid, coming a distant fourth in a race that was won by PNU candidate Yusuf Hassan.

Mr Waihiga, an advocate of more than 35 years in practice, is a graduate of the University of Nairobi where he studied law. He also has a master’s in leadership from the International Leadership University and is currently pursuing a PhD.

His law firm, Mwaure & Mwaure Waihiga & Co. Advocates, is based in Nairobi but also has offices in Malindi and Lamu.

He describes himself as “a strongly committed born again Christian and evangelical, who is also an ordained minister, a reverend and an apostle.”

He has promised that if elected, he would like to be remembered as the president who slew the dragon of corruption, bureaucracy, maladministration and tribalism completely from Kenya.

He has also promised to recover all stolen wealth in scandals and endemic corruption.

Mr Waihiga is married to Justice Anna Mwaure.

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Raila Odinga

Born in 1945 in Maseno, Raila Odinga is the son of Kenya’s first Vice President Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. This will be his fifth attempt at the presidency, having been on the ballot in 1997, 2007, 2013 and 2017. 

For his education, though critics have often raised questions about his formative years, Mr Odinga attended Kisumu Union and Maranda for his primary education before joining Maranda High School. He studied at the Technical College of Magdeburg, now part of Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, in then East Germany, where he qualified as a graduate engineer in 1970. His Engineers Board of Kenya profile indicates that he is a mechanical engineer. Before joining the Technical College of Magdeburg, Mr Odinga enrolled at the Herder Institution, which was part of the University of Leipzig, where he learned the German language. Mr Odinga had his first stint in public service in 1974 when he was appointed group standards manager at the Kenya Bureau of Standards before his promotion to deputy director in 1978. He also founded Standard Processing Equipment Construction and Erection Limited (later renamed East African Spectre), a company that manufactures liquid petroleum gas cylinders.

In his political journey, he was at the forefront of the push for constitutional and political reforms. This put him in the cross-hairs of President Moi’s police state and he was detained on numerous occasions by the Kanu administration. He would later flee to exile in Norway in 1991. He returned to Kenya in February 1992 and joined Ford at the height of the clamour for multi-partysm. He was elected Lang’ata MP in 1992 on a Ford Kenya ticket, but later ditched the party over leadership wrangles, and joined NDP on whose ticket he first sought the presidency in 1997, coming third after Moi and Mwai Kibaki (Democratic Party). Mr Odinga would then join Mr Moi’s government following the merger between KANU and NDP. He was subsequently appointed the Minister for Energy and also became Kanu’s secretary-general.

However, in 2002, he led a mass walkout from Kanu after President Moi endorsed Mr Uhuru Kenyatta as his successor, to form the National Rainbow coalition with Mr Kibaki and others. He would again fall out with Mr Kibaki and contest the presidential election in 2007 that was marred by post-election violence.

He was named Prime Minister in the subsequent grand coalition government that was formed after the peace talks mediated by late former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. His 2013 and 2017 bids for the presidency were unsuccessful. Mr Odinga made history in 2017 when he successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to nullify the presidential election. He refused to take part in the repeat elections but in 2018 had a political truce with President Kenyatta.

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George Wajackoyah

For all the talk about the economy and corruption on the campaign trail, Prof George Wajackoyah will be remembered more for his radical proposals on legalisation of marijuana and harvesting of hyena testicles for sale among other pledges.

The immigration lawyer is the candidate of the Roots Party. A former Special Branch (now National Intelligence Service) officer, Prof Wajackoyah is a law graduate of the University of Wolverhampton in the United Kingdom. He also holds master’s degrees in law from the University of London, the University of Warwick and the University of Baltimore; and Advanced Diploma in French from the University of Burundi, among other academic qualifications.

He was born on October 24, 1959, in Matungu, Kakamega County.

Prof Wajackoyah has also had an interesting past. In 1991, he was forced to go into exile following his involvement in the investigation of the murder of Foreign Affairs minister Robert Ouko.

At the time, he had been commissioned as an investigator by the then-director of intelligence, James Kanyotu, to look into whether anyone in government had been involved in the murder.

However, his involvement in the case would later put him at loggerheads with some people in government who accused him of foul play, leading to what he said was his detention and torture before he fled the country. He came back in 2011.

He has promised to legalise the growing of marijuana for industrial and heritage purposes, serve as the immigration minister as well as appoint a person of Asian ancestry to the trade ministry if he is elected President.

The presidential candidate further plans to revive local industries with the aim of promoting indigenous crops such as coconut and mukombero.