Embakasi East MP Babu Owino has said he is prepared to back Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna for two presidential terms before making his own bid for the top seat, according to The Star, Kenya. The lawmaker made the remarks on Thursday while meeting members of the Linda Mwananchi Women League at his office to discuss women's role in the country's future.
The position revises a plan Babu outlined in August, when he said he would run for the Nairobi governorship in 2027, serve a single term and then seek the presidency in 2032. Under the new timeline, he would wait until after Sifuna's proposed two terms, pushing his own presidential ambition to 2037.
Why it matters
The change extends a political arrangement that could shape how the opposition lines up for the 2027 general election. Linda Mwananchi has already positioned Sifuna as its preferred presidential candidate, while Babu is pursuing the Nairobi governorship, and the two men have publicly backed each other's immediate goals.
Babu's remarks also carry weight for opposition strategy more broadly. He used the same forum to call for unity among opposition leaders ahead of the vote, arguing that the movement must build on the support base left by the late former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who lost the 2022 presidential contest to President William Ruto.
A friendship framed as lasting a decade
Babu told the women's league that he wanted the relationship with Sifuna to outlast electoral politics. "Now that we have started this journey, I want us to build a friendship, whether politics is involved or not. We do not know where this friendship will take us," he said, as reported by The Star, Kenya.
He laid out the arithmetic of the revised plan: if Sifuna wins in 2027 and serves two terms, he would leave office in 2037 after ten years, and Babu said he would then want two terms of his own — a political journey he described as potentially spanning another 20 years.
Babu argued that the two leaders face no clash in 2027 because their immediate ambitions differ. "Sifuna does not want to be Nairobi Governor and Babu does not want to be President of Kenya at this stage. So there is no conflict of interest. We can work together as brothers and lift each other up," he said.
He asked supporters to back both men and to help each advance rather than let competition divide them. He also recalled that he left the Orange Democratic Movement before Sifuna did, and said the senator later followed him out of the party. Babu described the pair as brothers whose relationship was built through shared political experience, and said he intended to stay alongside Sifuna despite the difficulties ahead.
An appeal for opposition unity
Beyond the personal arrangements, Babu urged opposition leaders to close ranks before 2027 and to draw lessons from the 2022 defeat. He said the opposition must hold on to the support Raila built while drawing voters from other political formations. "Votes are about multiplication and addition, not division and subtraction," he said, according to The Star, Kenya.
He called on opposition figures to examine what went wrong in 2022 and fix weaknesses before the next election, cautioning against treating victory as assured. Difficult conversations about strategy, he said, were necessary to preserve existing support and reach other communities. He also credited leadership to God and said opposition unity would be essential to the movement's effort to challenge Ruto in 2027.
The remarks build on public positioning that has been under way for weeks. Babu declared his full support for Sifuna's presidential bid on October 4, during the unveiling of The Equitable Party. Sifuna has said he will contest the presidency in 2027 and wants to face Ruto at the ballot.
What to watch is whether other opposition figures respond to Babu's call for a united front, and whether the two-term proposal holds as the 2027 campaigns take shape.
