Thika Town under siege as residents celebrate the “New Sheriff”.

Thika Town MP-Elect Eng. Patrick Wainaina Wa Jungle mobbed by jubilant supporters on Wednesday evening after he was announced the winner with about 53% of the votes cast.

The roads in Thika Town on Wednesday were rumbling with residents and vehicles hitting the bitumen. A victory parade held to celebrate the announcement of Eng. Patrick Wainaina Wa Jungle as the MP-Elect of Thika Town Constituency brought business to a standstill.

Supporters flooded the streets, painting the town green with Eng. Wainaina’s election merchandise with thousands others lining up to wave and cheer the winner.

The jubilant crowd started to gather outside the Thika High School gate as early as 11am, chanting and singing as the constituency tallying was being done. They braved the chilly weather and hunger pangs for more than 6 hours before the “New-Kid-On-The-Block” emerged from the tallying hall.

Chants of “Jungle! Jungle!” broke out among the crowd, many of them wearing caps, green T-Shirts and lessos in support of the MP-Elect.

When the big moment came, Eng. Wainaina thanked the cheering crowd for the support.

“This is unbelievable! Thank you all for turning up and supporting me and believing in my dream of making Thika great again. This win belongs to all of us. We have gone through a grueling tough battle, pushed hard through and we got there. We thank God for that.”

In his brief victory speech, Wainaina highlighted his desire work with all the leaders and people of Thika regardless of their previous stand in the just concluded elections  — and with it, the prospect of creating jobs through investment.

The parade began at around 6pm before snaking through the town streets with the crowd running along with the convoy for more than 6km on both sides of the road, making various stops along the way to recognise the people’s confirmation.

Eng. Wainaina ran as an independent candidate and trounced his fiercest challenger, Jubilee’s Alice Wambui Ng’ang’a to secure election. He beat all odds to conquer the Jubilee Party wave that swept across the Mt. Kenya region.

All eyes were in fact on Thika Town Constituency due to the interest it had drawn during the campaign trail. All key Jubilee Party luminaries came to town to campaign for the incumbent Alice Ng’ang’a, with some even setting camp.

A lot of campaign rhetoric and propaganda was peddled against Wainaina’s candidature, probably to sell the fear tag with intent to alienating him from the electorate.

As voting progressed, there still were pockets of voter lobbying geared towards convincing those still who hadn’t voted.

Eventually when vote counting started on Tuesday evening, all eyes were on the parliamentary results in each of the 230 polling stations. It was simply one of the longest and tense night in the history of this constituency.

As night fell and news was filtering through that Wainaina had accrued an insurmountable lead. His supporters started celebrating via social media and by dawn, some had started pouring into the streets, chanting in support of the engineer.

With 96.09% of the results transmitted, Wainaina had garnered 58 286 votes (52.57%) against Alice’s 52 115 votes (47.00%). According to the provisional results seen by our press team, the margin was poised to increase by about 7,000 votes, completely locking out the incumbent from any chances of retaining her seat.

The other candidate, George Muritu Gathecha had 477 votes or 0.43% of the votes cast.