President Uhuru Kenyatta has not been the favourite of ODM's Kilifi County Governor Amason Jeffah Kingi.
The two have been at loggerheads since the governor was elected in 2013, with Uhuru at some point threatening to arrest and jail Kingi over graft in his administration.
In 2017, Kingi told a local daily that things fell apart when he, alongside several coastal region elected leaders were invited at Deputy President William Ruto’s Karen residence in Nairobi.
According to him, the others included his Mombasa counterpart Ali Hassan Joho; Gideon Mung’aro, Aisha Jumwa, Mishi Mboko, Mustafa Idd, Khatib Mwashetani, and Suleiman Dori.
Kingi who was a member of the then Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (Cord), said the Coastal leaders were asked to decamp to President Uhuru's Jubilee Party and sale it in the coastal region.
"I and Joho told them to their face that it is only through development projects that coast residents can join Jubilee, but they insisted and tried to bribe us,” he said.
After they had left the meeting, the former Magarini MP said some ODM leaders went back to the residence and money exchanged hands.
The claims were however dismissed by DP Ruto’s spokesman David Mugonyi who said: "That is a figment of his imagination. I am not aware of such a meeting ever taking place.”
On his part, Joho claimed Uhuru was bitter to the two became the two “have refused to kneel before the king.”