Hollow men with egos the size of a small islands is what Robert Alai and Boniface Mwangi are. Together with a few others who have always peddled their twitter influence to corporate or donor groups for personal gain like Ory Okolloh, we are now fully convinced that these individuals are double-agents, planted to to destabilise discourse meant to trigger Government response or Citizen action.
For instance, sometime last month Robert Alai went to the press and announced that lawyers James Orengo and Harun Ndubi would represent all bloggers pro-bono, after they had been summoned by the Police at DCI HeadQuarters off Kiambu Road. Turns out that it was a lie, and Alai wanted to leverage all other bloggers to be arrested, so as to trade them for his freedom. He was setting them up. A disgusting traitor to the cause of freedom and a just society, who never participates in hashtags he didn't create. It was thus an insult by BBC Radio Service to invite Robert Alai for an interview as regards to #DeportRutosPilot yet the blogger only joined the fray much later after the initiative went viral.
Then there is a bonafide intellectual-thief Boniface Mwangi. To satisfy his audience and prove to the world and his donors that he is the alpha and omega of classified information, he stole a tweet from a user @KenyaFootball and framed it as his own. The details included the names of Ruto's pilot and information regarding the Deputy President's recent helicopter acquisition. While @KenyaFootball had posted the details at 08:09 , @BonifaceMwangi stole the content and posted his at 08:43 . A 34 minute time-lapse. What a shame! And this is a person who has hosted top diplomats like John Kerry and many ambassadors in Kenya, engaging in intellectual-property theft, instead of retweeting. Any donor dealing with Boniface Mwangi should be ashamed of themselves!
This post is meant to encourage ordinary Kenyans that you don't have to rely on the so-called Twitter luminaries like Robert Alai, Boniface Mwangi, Ory Okolloh to push a message. These are Government operatives planted in Twitter to stifle dissent and dumb-down solid arguments, stretch discourse and fatigue the mind. It's the reason yesterday that even as the hashtag #DeportRutosPilot started gathering momentum, individuals started distorting focus by pointing our irrelevant grammatical discrepancies like it should have been ArrestRutosPilot or what not. These are enemies of change and status-quo operatives. Be alive to their machinations.
As Cyprian Nyakundi, I believe that there are many Kenyans out there doing good not to impress donor like Boniface Mwangi, pay bills like Robert Alai or kiss Uhuru's ass in exhange for a job like Ory Okolloh. This particular lot simply acts frustrated because Uhuru didn't employ them in key posts, not because they are genuinely interested in Kenya's development agenda that provides and equal opportunity to anyone irrespective of age, tribe or religious belief.
Kenyans be mindful of those who walk the moral high-ground on Twitter, using big words and imposing standards or etiquette in a bid to shape discourse and make it "politically-correct". Twitter is new to even it's own creators and nobody can quite control what people think or say. Be encouraged that anyone can make a change using social-media without the big names retweeting you. They shamelessly jump in to steal tweets, get credit and even do radio interviews for the sake of their own egos or pockets, not for your sake. If you din't know, now you know!
Follow them, but take what they post with a pinch of salt.