IN SHORT: Kenya's former president Uhuru Kenyatta relinquished power in September 2022 and has largely stayed out of politics. But that has not stopped impostors from publishing controversial statements in his name on social media.
The Facebook page Uhuru Kenyatta uses the name and photos of Kenya’s former president Uhuru Kenyatta to post on Facebook.
The posts cover various topics, from updating users on Kenyatta’s personal engagements to inviting them to upcoming religious events.
But what caught our eye was the page’s tendency to use foul language and demeaning names when referring to Kenyan president William Ruto, his deputy Rigathi Gachagua and other politicians.
It has repeatedly referred to Ruto as “Zakayo”, Kiswahili for Zacchaeus, the tax collector in the Christian Bible. Ruto’s push for tax collection has led some users on social media platforms to derogatorily nickname him “Zakayo”.
On 6 February 2024, the page posted an image showing Gachagua’s face and captioned it: “Serikali ya mikora?” This translates from Kiswahili as: “A government of crooks?”
It has even changed Gachagua’s name to “Gachietha”, the Luo community’s word for faeces.
Other posts can be seen here, here and here. They have attracted hundreds of engagements.
The page has over 49,000 followers and claims to be run by the “Fourth President of the Republic of Kenya”.
But is that the case? We checked.
Imposter page
Kenyatta did not support Ruto in the August 2022 presidential elections. However, it is unlikely that the former president, who is widely respected both locally and internationally, would use words and names that are inappropriate against his perceived political rivals.
The page’s posts are poorly written and contain glaring grammatical errors. These are common signs of suspicious accounts and pages. If the post was published by Kenyatta or any member of his team, we would expect it to be error-free.
The “page transparency” section of this page shows that it was created on 9 September 2021 under the name “Kenya Politics”. It later changed to “Uhuru Kenyatta Diehard” and finally to its current name. All these changes were made within one year. Frequent name changes on a page are usually a red flag.
Kenyatta’s legit Facebook page
Kenyatta served as president of Kenya from 2013 to 2022. He suspended his social media accounts in 2019. At the time, his chief of staff Nzioka Waita cited “unauthorised access” to the president’s social media accounts as the reason.
He set up new social media accounts after leaving office. Kenyatta’s official Facebook page is Office of the 4th President of the Republic of Kenya and on X, formerly Twitter, his account is Office of the 4th President of Kenya.
Both were created in November 2022. They post well-written messages with no grammatical errors.
The Facebook page in question is fake.
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