Tetu MP Geoffrey Wandeto has urged the government to stop its planned crackdown on youth dissent on social media.
In an interview with a local TV station’s breakfast show on Monday, January 13, 2025, Wandeto noted that the AI-generated images circulating online are the youth’s way of silent resistance.
“By 2027, let us brace ourselves for a level of madness that we possibly wouldn’t control,” Wandeto said.
“The more we are getting into competition with the youth, the more we motivate them.”
This came just a day after Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen dared the youth to exercise discipline in social circles or face arrest.
“If the criminals and people of bad behaviour have moved from being manual to the digital space, I want to tell them we will follow you there; because that is where we want to ensure that there is law and order. We will expend every resource that is before us to make sure that we apprehend criminals,” Murkomen said on January 12, 2025.
One large jail
Wandeto, however, maintained that Murkomen should take it easy with the youth and let them be as he would run out of jails to accommodate all dissidents.
“It is either we convert the whole country into one large prison or we breathe in and out and let the youth be and focus on delivering the Kenya-Kwanza plan,” Wandeto remarked.
Adding: “I don’t know what size of jail we are going to create to accommodate all these young people who we will have to arrest and criminalise.”
Silent resistance
Wandeto indicated that the majority of the youth who have borne the brunt of abductions lack criminal intent and are simply expressing their own version of soft resistance.
“Some of them (youth) are having fun, expressing themselves and few, if any, are having any criminal intent. It is a silent protest; their own form of soft resistance,” Wandeto added.
The remarks came after five of six youths abducted between December 21-24, 2024, were released in various regions across the country after spending two weeks in custody.
While the National Police and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) distanced themselves from any involvement with the disappearances, President William Ruto promised to bring to an end the abductions during an address in Homa Bay county.
Ruto has equally warned the youth against posting gory images of individuals online, stating that it is an indiscipline which must be reigned.
