Kenya’s former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has officially resigned from the ruling United Democratic Alliance (UDA) party, accusing the party of betraying its founding ideals and failing the Kenyan people.
In his resignation letter dated May 12, 2025 and addressed to both the party’s Secretary General and the Kenyan public, Gachagua declared his immediate departure, citing what he called the “most dangerous political moment” for the country.
“I have made this decision in knowledge of the ideals of the Party we believed in, and so were millions of Kenyans,” Gachagua wrote. “But now has turned out to be the most dangerous political moment for the people and the Republic of Kenya in retrogressive philosophy of unfit class to govern our Nation.”
Gachagua accused UDA of squandering a historic opportunity to transform Kenya. He referenced the party’s 2022 manifesto under the Kenya Kwanza Coalition, highlighting a broken covenant with the Kenyan people.
“Our United Democratic Alliance (UDA) party is founded on the ideology that the national aspirations – justice, peace, freedom, prosperity – that we pray for, as we sing our national anthem, is a covenant that binds us to political inclusion and economic empowerment of all Kenyans,” he noted. “It was a lie. No nation can be built on a litany of lies.”
Gachagua enumerated a series of failed promises under the UDA administration. He criticized the party for abandoning the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda, citing that even the much-publicized Hustler Fund has been reduced to an unsustainable business token.
“What business can Kshs. 500 start sustainably?” he questioned, adding that the five core sectors meant to anchor economic transformation in agriculture, MSMEs, housing, healthcare, and ICT — have become “a Centre of crime with no tangible gains to the people of Kenya.”
He decried the regime’s failure in agriculture, accusing it of failing to support farmers, allowing land grabbing and subjecting citizens to food insecurity. Housing promises, he said, had turned into “a sharp sword on the payslip of the Kenyan worker,” while youth employment efforts had disintegrated into lip service.
“The commitment was to ‘turn the housing challenge into an economic opportunity and employ over 100,000 young graduates from TVETs into the sector by building 250,000 houses every year.’ Unfortunately, this has become an individual business venture,” Gachagua stated.
He also accused the party of presiding over the collapse of the healthcare system, introducing a failed insurance scheme, and auctioning Kenyans to commercial institutions.
On matters of education, he said, “The UDA party is delivering a failed CBC curriculum, an incoherent and corrupt university funding model. No Kenyan child or parent is safe under this planned failure.”
He also condemned the regime’s treatment of women, saying, “The regime is only meting violence on women and abducting and killing their children while arbitrarily detaining others. School-going children including Secondary School Girls cannot be allowed to express themselves without being subjected to police brutality.”
He lamented the abandonment of the party’s social protection agenda, particularly the promises to Persons with Disabilities, senior citizens, and girls, adding, “UDA has left every Kenyan on their own and behind.”
