Why I ditched Jubilee - Onyango Oloo

Is Onyango Oloo a traitor or a pragmatist?

What you need to know:

  • He said 28 more county officials from the defunct TNA would join him in the opposition.
  • He later joined Cord leader Raila Odinga at the Jomo Kenyatta grounds to rally Nyanza residents to register as voters.

Former TNA secretary-general Onyango Oloo on Wednesday led officials from eight counties to decamp from the Jubilee Party to the Cord coalition.

Mr Oloo said he will join Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).

He said he would not allow his people to be in a “political outfit without the interest of Kenyans at heart.”

The outspoken lawyer accused the President Uhuru Kenyatta-led government of presiding over corruption claiming the new Jubilee Party had been hijacked by people associated with Deputy President William Ruto’s United Republican Party (URP).

"The Luo people have a saying that you can do business with a thief and a witch and remain clean but when you marry them you also become a thief and a witch," Mr Oloo said.

He said the creation of the Jubilee Party on September 19 last year did not accommodate TNA’s platform.

The Jubilee Party was born out of a merger between President Kenyatta’s TNA and URP, led by Mr Ruto.

"TNA was neutral and founded on ideologies we believed in that would take Kenya to the next level and unite them. However, little did we know we were being led into a vile and vicious political conmanship," he said.

Mr Oloo on Wednesday led the eight officials and close to 200 members of the former TNA party to decamp to ODM at the Kisumu Public Service Club.

He said 28 more county officials from the defunct TNA would join him in the opposition.

He later joined Cord leader Raila Odinga at the Jomo Kenyatta grounds to rally Nyanza residents to register as voters.

He said Jubilee is run by an amorphous secretariat led by a man whose party was not part of the Jubilee pact.

The secretariat is led by former Cabinet minister Raphael Tuju, who seems to have edged out Mr Oloo from the Jubilee circles.