Nyandarua Senator John Methu and Ol Kalou MP Sammy Ngotho during the by-election on July 16,2026. [Kipsang Joseph, Standard]
Kenya has many amazing towns, many in rural setting, with their peculiarities but few are as amazing as Ol Kalou, which is both big and small.
It is smaller than Nyahururu, which cannot make up its mind as to whether it is in Laikipia or Nyandarua County, and bigger than other constituencies in terms of national political impact.
It overlooks the colonial ‘Happy Valley’ and is the capital of Nyandarua County, which hosts many remnants of the Mau Mau War.
It is also a political weathervane which occasionally attracts national attention and it attracted big attention in July because of a highly symbolic by-election which stopped being an Ol Kalou affair and turned into an open political referendum into President William Ruto’s UDA and Oburu Oginga’s ODM coalition government.
With Oburu advising Ruto to exercise ‘benevolent dictatorship’, the implied verdict, felt across the country, was that people reject the Ruto-Oburu "broad-based" government.
The star of the political show, it appeared, was John Methu, the singing bearded senator from Nyandarua. Methu had attracted attention, despite efforts to silence him, by telling Ruto “Mimi Sikuogopi” during the funeral service for former Ol Kalou MP David Njuguna Kiaraho which occasioned the by-election.
Although Methu’s candidate, an equally bearded Sammy Kamau Ngotho, thumped his rivals into admitting solid defeat, the story was elsewhere. Bearded Methu and Kamau were simply symbolic of the political tide that seemingly rejected Ruto and his many promises.