What exactly happened at the Gilgil CDF offices?

As things continue to get back to normal in most parts of the country with the quelling of the protests, a section of youth in Gilgil decided to #OccupyCDFOffices.

Their aim was to demand for accountability regarding how the Constituency Development Funds (CDF) are being used in their constituency.

However, when they arrived at the office things got noisy and messy real fast.

In the incident that took place on August 13, Daniel Kimani, an organizer says that the main goal was to examine the audit reports from 2019 which over the years seem to have a lot of discrepancies.

“We did a formal letter on August 12 requesting the same, but the office refused to take the letter citing that it was not well written. We did another letter the same day, but by the time we went to hand it over they had locked the office,” he says.

Mr Kimani says that they went to the office the following day, a fracas ensued.

According to the Chairman Gilgil NGCDF Peter Njoroge, he is not allowed to divulge the information the youth demanded.

“There was no formal notification issued with regards to this meeting and therefore it was an ambush on our part but we tried our best to give them answers. However, they seem not to have been satisfied with the responses. That’s when they started causing havoc in the premises,” he says.

On Kimani’s part, he says that they were very peaceful. It was not until unknown elements injected themselves into the peaceful demonstrations, that everything went haywire.

“The group started causing problems. They locked us inside the office grounds by locking the gate and forced our camera person to delete all his footage before we were allowed to leave,” he says.

Peter Kimemia, the freelance photographer who captured the whole incident, says he was harassed by the group who he says were about 20 in number.

Mtaa Wangu got access to the Occurrence Book number (25/13/08/2024) filed by Peter Kimemia at the Gilgil Police station where he went to report the assault.

Moses Gitonga, a human rights activist and opinion leader in Gilgil says that even during the Gen Z protests, such occurrences were seen.

“Tuesday’s incident was very unfortunate. The direction the youth took to be able to engage with their leaders was commendable. Considering all they were demanding for is accountability it was very unfortunate for some individuals who were paid to hijack such matters and cause havoc,” he says.

Protests in the larger Nakuru County have cooled down over the past two weeks with everything slowly going back to normal.