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Uhuru warns Kioni against insulting Gachagua
Former President and Jubilee Party leader Uhuru Kenyatta (left) with party Secretary-General Jeremiah Kioni during Special National Delegates Conference at Ngong Racecourse in Nairobi on September 26, 2025.
Jubilee Party leader Uhuru Kenyatta on Friday admonished the party's Secretary-General Jeremiah Kioni for what he termed as “insults” against former deputy president Rigathi Gachagua.
While addressing the party leaders’ forum in Murang’a County, the former president rejected the behaviour.
“And you Kioni...This habit of I routinely seeing you online insulting other leaders...this or that, sometimes Gachagua...what for? I don’t want that kind of rubbish,” said Mr Kenyatta.
The ex-president said Jubilee Party must be an outfit that sells ideologies, not an insulting forum.
“Let us sell the party agenda...Party policies...what we intend to do as a party to take the country forward but not insults,” he said.
“Anyone using my party to insult others will have to go. I will ensure you are kicked out...you will have to go and get yourself another party to progress that kind of rubbish.”
Mr Kioni declined to respond to Mr Kenyatta when we contacted him to comment.
Mr Kioni has been under pressure from the party to go easy on his perceived hardliner stance against Mr Gachagua.
Recently, the party chairman Mr Saitoti Torome said “most of the things Mr Kioni and others speak publicly are not party positions…They are his own opinions”.
He said “the party's official position is usually a product of deliberated agenda by party organs which I’m the chairman”.
Mr Gachagua allies responded with gratitude saying the former president has done well to call out some of his brigade who have been toxic.
New Gema Chairman Isaac Mungai said, “We welcome the call...but it is not only Mr Kioni who in any case had for the past week come out as a reformed man who has been praising Mr Gachagua”.
Mr Kioni had on November 5, 2025 declared that “Gachagua is a talented, shrewd and instinctive ground mobiliser of unequalled mien”.
Mr Kioni said then: “I am now aware that competing with Gachagua on the ground of oratory skills is hard”.
Mr Mungai further cited former Nyeri Town MP Wambugu Ngunjiri as another culprit who ought to be tamed.
“Mr Wambugu has been misusing Jubilee Party platform to be very demeaning against Mr Gachagua,” he said.
But Mr Wambugu distanced himself from the accusation, saying he is a disciplined Jubilee Party member.
“I am in Jubilee Party. But I have never insulted Mr Gachagua, so Uhuru Kenyatta’s warning doesn’t apply to me,” Mr Wambugu told the Nation.
But he added that there is a difference between insulting and exposing. “I will continue exposing Gachagua because what I say are facts. Those are not insults. Which is why Kenyatta’s statement does not apply to me.”
Kikuyu Council of Elders Chairman Wachira Kiago welcomed Mr Kenyatta’s directive and urged all Mt Kenya politicians to cease ‘cannibal politics’.
“It is perfect wisdom for Mr Kenyatta to issue that warning...We should practice reciprocal wisdom by banning rubbish politics from our region and the country at large,” he said.
