Details emerge of vigilante group patrolling Nakuru streets

On Tuesday night at about 7 pm, a group of men carrying rungus and whips are seen walking down Gusii road heading to Ngata 2NV sacco stage.

Just a few meters from the stage, these young men who are heavily armed are seen attacking an individual and begin to ruthlessly beat him up.

Once they are done, the young man remains on the cold wet floor unable to move. 

Fast forward to Wednesday morning, running battles ensued between police and a section of the street children.

Turns out the man I saw being beaten up on Tuesday was a street child, accused of robbing passengers at the stage.

Those that beat him, Mtaa Wangu can now confirm is a vigilante group bestowing on themselves the job of maintaining law and order in the city centre.

Mtaa Wangu reached out to Joshua Wanjala a Nakuru resident who says that he is among the individuals who are patrolling the city centre trying to bring back sanity.

"There are those people who are "Kamageras" - these people pretend to be conductors na watu wa kubeba mzigo. They are the ones we are after because they are linked to many of the crimes in our stages making it unsafe for the passengers," he says. 

Joshua goes ahead to give instances where phones have been stolen, business women working in the various bus stages being robbed and harassment of passengers. 

"About two weeks ago, together with other people some who work in these stages, we decided to take matters into our own hands and chase away the trouble makers," he adds. 

Joshua says the vigilante team held a meeting with the Governor where they laid out their grievance and reached an agreement with the county boss to ‘work together’. 

"We raised the issue of insecurity with the police but no action was forthcoming from them. We reached out to the Governor and we were even supposed to be given dust coats that had been labelled " county security" so that we could be easily identified," he adds. 

Wanjala insists, "We should not be labelled as ‘goons’. We are concerned citizens who are acting on the state of insecurity in our city. We presented ourselves to the county government and there we got the go ahead to help bring back sanity to our streets." 

However, County Trade Executive Stephen Kuria denies claims of there being any meeting between the group and the governor or any county official.

"The county government has a fully functioning and operational enforcement office which it uses to carry out its mandate," he emphasized.