This archive report was first published on 19 July 2020.
On July 17, 2020, Nairobi Senator Johnson Sakaja found himself at the center of a controversy after he was arrested for violating Covid-19 pandemic rules in Nairobi's Kilimani area.
According to the police, Sakaja was arrested at a bar, Ladies Lounge, off Dennis Pritt Road, at around 1.10am for violating the government's curfew orders. The curfew hours had been extended to between 9pm to 4am as part of regulations to contain the spread of Covid-19.
Police said Sakaja was found in a group of 10 people who were drinking, despite the ban on gatherings. When advised to leave, Sakaja declined, prompting the team leader to call her bosses, who also failed to convince the lawmaker to leave.
Later, Adan Hassan, the Deputy Sub-county Commander - Kilimani, was dispatched to the bar with a reinforcement. Police said Sakaja and his acquaintances refused to leave and dared the officers to handcuff them.
After six of the people in the group left, Sakaja and three others remained. The other three, however, refused to give their names when asked for processing, police said.
The three were driven to Kilimani police station, where the Senator was asked to agree to be granted free bond, but he refused to leave, denying that he was drunk and questioning why he was being humiliated.
It is then that the Senator is said to have threatened to transfer all the officers involved in his arrest within 24 hours.
“You know me for 10 years, but these police officers have known me today, but they say I’m drunk. Am I drunk?” Sakaja asked his unidentified friend in a video that has gone viral on social media.
The incident raises questions on whether the Senator went against the very rules that he helped formulate as the chair of Senate’s Covid-19 committee, and whether police applied double standard by releasing him.
