This archive report was first published on 4 July 2019.
Published on July 4, 2019, hackers took control of Safaricom's Twitter accounts, sending a series of controversial tweets that sparked a heated online debate.
The tweets, which were sent from the company's official handles @safaricomPLC and @Safaricom_care, criticized the Kenyan government's demand that the next Safaricom CEO should be a Kenyan national.
According to the tweets, the government should first improve the management of several state corporations that have been run down by Kenyan CEOs before imposing their choice on Safaricom.
“Let the Government first improve management in NHIF, Kenya Airways, Kenya Pipeline, Mumias Sugar, Muhoroni Sugar and many other organizations that have deliberately been run down by state appointees before they can think of imposing their choice on Safaricom,” read one of the tweets.
However, Safaricom later attributed the tweets to a system glitch and apologized to its customers, stating that the issue had been rectified.
“Good morning. We apologize for the series of tweets that went out from our official accounts last night. We had a system glitch that has since been rectified. Thank you,” the company tweeted.
This incident comes days after the company erroneously sent a message to several subscribers threatening to shut down their sim cards if they failed to top up Sh5 airtime.
