UhuRuto campaigns in Nairobi
President Uhuru Kenyatta will today return to Nairobi County in his last-minute efforts to seek re-election on August 8.
The President, accompanied by his deputy William Ruto and the Nairobi Jubilee team, will address a rally at Jacaranda Grounds - the same place National Super Alliance leader Raila Odinga first went after he was cleared to run for office on May 28.
NASA ZONE
In the rally, Mr Odinga declared Nairobi a Nasa zone, asking the Nairobi voters to lock Jubilee out of the city.
In today’s rally, Jubilee will be seeking to not only woo the Nairobi County voters to their fold, but also asking them to vote in a Jubilee governor in Nairobi.
The Jubilee duo have argued that it was an impediment on its development plans to have a non-Jubilee governor in the capital city, and which controls 60 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product.
Senator Mike Sonko and Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero of Nasa are in a neck-and-neck battle for the top seat with the latest opinion poll putting them at a tie of 44 per cent.
In 2013, Senator Sonko had the third highest number of votes nationally after President Kenyatta and Mr Odinga with 808,705 votes.
RALLIES
Comparatively, Dr Kidero, though running for a different seat, had 692,483 votes, beating Jubilee’s Ferdinand Waititu by about 70,000 votes.
For the presidency in 2017, Nairobi, with 2,250,823 voters up from 1,732,288 in 2013, is a classic battleground. The county was in 2013 split between the two leading candidates as President Kenyatta had 659,490 votes and Mr Odinga 691,156. Turnout was 81 per cent.
In his visit today, President Kenyatta will, after the rally, make stop overs at Donholm, Tassia, Fedha, Pipeline, Taj Mall, Mradi, Utawala, St. Benedicta and Eastern Bypass then exit to Kagundo Road.
