A fourth-year university student will spend two years in jail for posting on social media unprintable insults against President Uhuru Kenyatta.

Alan Wadi Okengo, alias Lieutenant Wadi, was accused of posting the messages on his Facebook account on December 18 and 19 at an unknown place within Kenya.

Wadi, 25, a political science student at Moi University, was arrested as he attempted to sneak out of the country through the Busia border on December 31.

He was brought back to Nairobi CID headquarters where he was interrogated by cybercrime police sleuths.

Wadi, who looked composed, told Milimani Law Courts resident magistrate Ms Ann Kaguru that he was ready to “apologise to President Kenyatta personally if he was not handed down a custodial sentence.”

The charge against the university student stated that “the message he sent was calculated to to bring into contempt the lawful authority of the President of the Republic of Kenya.”

PLEA NOT FACTORED

His plea was not factored when he was he was being sentenced after pleading guilty to two charges of hate speech and demeaning authority of a public officer, contrary to Section 132 of the Penal Code.

In her ruling, Ms Kaguru said , “the offence is serious and a deterrent penalty is called for to serve as a warning to others abusing the social media forums.”

She proceeded to pronounce the sentence after saying that “he was convicted on his own plea of guilty.”

A state counsel, Mathew Karori, told the magistrate that the accused was arrested while he was about to cross the border through “panya routes” (unofficial exit) to a neighbouring country.”

Mr Karori urged the court to treat the remorseful student as a first offender although he said the abuse of the social media forum should be discouraged.

Wadi was accused of posting the two offensive messages when National Assembly passed the Security Laws (Amendment) Act No 19 of 2014 on December 18 and the following day when President Kenyatta signed the Bill to become law last year.

The first indictment was that he posted a hate speech message intended to stir up ethnic hatred between various Kenyan communities on the other by alleging a particular tribe should be deported to their home county.

SOURCE : http://www.nation.co.ke/news/Allan-Wadi-University-student-jailed-insulting-Uhuru-Kenyatta/-/1056/2576650/-/1igoa4/-/index.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30658461

If Nairaland were in kenya 90% of us will be serving our jail term now, most Africa leaders are dictatorship

D pix of wia he's insulting oga Kenyatta or adon.......

Apshit mk una nor wori d music go soon reach 9ja.dat berel guy go b d first to enta jail

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K

Is this Metuselah 25?

Interesting. As youths we should learn to criticize constructively and not incite hate

If na nigeria. Let jona put all of us prison na. Sebi he wan make us popular ni.

but why this is not on fp ? mods what are you waiting for ?

justhelp:
If Nairaland were in kenya 90% of us will be serving our jail term now, most Africa leaders are dictatorship

There are plenty of Nairaland-like forums in Kenya that insult the president in more ways than you can think of. This story makes it look like president or the presidency is the one that jailed the guy when its not. The guy was not actually jailed for insulting the president, but for insulting the president ethnic group. Insulting someone's else ethnic group is hate speech, its called incitement in Kenya. And its not the place for the presidency to take you to court, there is a commission charged specifically with that duty. There is nothing dictactorial about this. Kenyans learn there lessons, when the Law doens't protect its citizens, they change it. the article on Daily Nation says

"The first indictment was that he posted a hate speech message intended to stir up ethnic hatred between various Kenyan communities on the other by alleging a particular tribe should be deported to their home county"

The BBC article also says

"He was also convicted of hate speech, after saying members of the president's Kikuyu ethnic group should be confined to certain parts of the country."

Comments like these are the one that made people to kill each other during the post-election violence in 2007/08 (more than 1,300 died), It almost led to a civil war, Bytheway!!!! Kenya has never had a civil war. And Kenyans woke up and said never again, they voted in a new costitution and changed many things and among them was the bill of rights and freedom of speech, but they also made sure that such hateful comments about each other ethnic groups or races in Kenya, will NEVER EVER, incite Kenyans to hate each other. Everyone who can read and understand, can read the constitution and know the bloody difference between freedom of speech and (ethnic,racist) hate speech.

herald9:

We are really living in paradise here... considering the amount of insults doled out to Jona on daily basis...We should be glad we had a president like him...

The fact that you credit one guy for your freedoms is evidence enough to show you guys are still far behind in terms of freedoms. So if another president comes that doesnt feel the same way as the previous, it means you could still go back to old ways. The bill of rights can never be changed by anyone unless Kenyans change it through a referendum. Any law that is made by parliament has to above the threshhold of the bill of rights. Part of the Sercurity bill that was passed recently by the president has already been suspended by the high court pending the outcome of its verdict,(Just so you know, Many bills have been rejected by the high court before after bieng signed by the president, for unconstitutional) all because of the bill of rights.


The same bill of rights also says anyone who has been offended by another person can take them to court. the line in the BBC article that says "A prominent blogger was recently charged after calling Mr Kenyatta an "adolescent president" (Among other insults)- Now this blogger is ruthless, and he is a big deal in Kenya,He has many 'connections' lets just says he has the power to cause ripples in Kenya for his controversial statements he can make and he never apologizes for anything he says (am actually a fan of his comments sometimes) - he made that comment while talking about a terrorist attack that had happend while the president was in Abu-dhabi for a meeting with officials there but he was seen taking 'selfies' instead of comming back to his country.... anyway, this guy has insulted the president plenty of times but after he was done insulting this time, he shared the personal phone numbers belonging to the president and his close friends and aides on twitter. Even twitter itself independently suspended the bloggers twitter accounts.Even you, if someone posted your personal contacts and that of your friends or clients, you would feel violated. and if you are the freakin president, there are about a dozen security breaches, I means he'll have to change his number.... So the same bill of rights used by Kenyans is the same one that was used by the president who felt that his individual rights had been violated, And as a citizen, he has the right to go to court... Anyway, the guy was released on bail and his cooled down now, onece the case is done, he will definately go back to his mojo! Just so you know, there are plenty of cases where this and other previous presidents have failed to win any case against this guy. for eg. this guys defence after he posted those numbers is "the president and his aids are a public officeres, so there personal phone numbers should be public informaion so that anyone who wants to call them can do so " - Personally, I think thats a good defence. Its called democracy!!!

i love democracy

hmmm