Controversial journalist Milton Nyakundi’s Nairobi home was reportedly searched by unidentified individuals believed to be rogue police officers over his incessant criticism against President William Ruto’s government.
A police report filed by Nyakundi’s children’s caretaker said the hooded men made away with one desktop computer and two mobile phones after ransacking the house for hours on Tuesday night. The cousin was detained in one of the bedrooms while being interrogated about what happens in the home and who visits the home.
The journalist is currently out of the country, having left Kenya after the 2022 General Elections and the raid in his home comes just a few days after a similar incident in the home of former UDA secretary general Cleophas Malala, whose son and nephew were abducted for six hours and a few weeks after Citizen TV journalist Stephen Letoo’s house was attacked.
“They scaled the wall as I was watching the news. I thought it was Nyakundi’s children coming back from visiting their uncle so I opened the front door only to see five people in hoods pointing guns at me,” reads part of the police report filed by the caretaker who fears being named in media reports.
According to the report, Nyakundi’s son and daughter were not at the home at the time as they had gone visiting their uncle who also lives in the city to see off a relative that was scheduled to travel out of the country and were to be dropped back the same night.
“They then asked me to show them the master bedroom and where the office is. I was so scared and had no choice but to show them the bedroom first. “Two of them started to search the bedroom and the others searched the office but did not seem to find anything they were looking for so they disconnected the only computer in the house and two mobile phones and said they will be back.”
Nyakundi is among those who have led calls for the resignation of President Ruto and his government, accusing the Kenya Kwanza administration of incompetence, corruption and bad governance.
The former KBC scribe, who rose to national fame as a football analysis host in the mid-200s and controversially quit the state broadcaster during the 2012 strike by Broadcasting House workers, has also been a thorn in the flesh of the Nick Mwendwa’s regime at the Football Kenya Federation.
“No level of intimidation, amount of blackmail or number of abductions will dampen the spirit of true patriots in the fight against your autocratic exercise of delegated power and we will not be cowed by your schemes and machinations to cause us to abandon the revolution,” Nyakundi recently posted on his X handle.
“You may kill, injure and maim some of us and even threaten our families to coerce us into silence but I assure you I will not; there are millions of us who are willing to stand up and call you out with your minions.
“You are now sending your mercenaries to intimidate us and blackmail us into submission but we will not allow you to get away with the evils of the illegitimate administration you lead which is a cabal of thieves and stinky corrupt dealers masquerading as leaders.” In the recent past, in the aftermath of Gen Z-led protests in Kenya, journalists and activists have faced the wrath of rogue police officers executing illegal orders of brutality, including the abduction and detention of veteran journalist Macharia Gaitho in the company of his son, among other incidents of injustice against journalists.
In March this year, Nyakundi obtained court orders stopping the Annual General Meeting of Football Kenya Federation which was meant to prepare for elections and pave the way for preparations for the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations.
According to sources familiar with what is going with AFCON plans,Nyakundi is perceived by some top officials in the ministry of sports and among the Mwendwa circles because he (Nyakundi) has frustrated the plans to have FKF elections with his court cases so there are very many people in this government that are very unhappy with him.
Mwendwa and Nyakundi do not see eye-to-eye, the journalist accusing the outgoing FKF supremo of presiding over the most corrupt football administration in Kenya’s history and filing dozens of cases against Mwendwa.
The fire spitting scribe has been critical of the Ruto regime’s handling of the anti-finance protestors, echoing the activists’ claims that the police are responsible for the deaths and abductions of innocent civilians.
He is said to be among the leading voices demanding for the resignation of Ruto and his administration which is facing increasing pressure over, among other allegations, police brutality, massive corruption and bad governance. Nyakundi has maintained his uncompromising stance, saying he will not be blackmailed or intimidated even if his detractors continued their attacks against him and his family.
In 2021, Nyakundi was attacked by goons as he addressed the media at a press conference in Nairobi where he was speaking about corruption in FKF as he called for the appointment of a multi-agency team of inspectors by Sports Registrar Rose Wasike.
In 2022, Nyakundi posted a video on social media claiming that his life and that of his family were in danger following Ruto’s election.
Mwendwa, a close ally of Ruto’s, is reported to have recently attempted to compromise Nyakundi who they view as a stumbling block to the machinations of siphoning public funds through the 2027 AFCON preparations.
But the journalist scoffed at their overtures and turned the heat on them through X platform where he has made it his business to call on Kenyans to stop Ruto’s government plot to embezzle billions in the name of AFCON preparations.
In 2018, Nyakundi’s wife Rebecca Njoki was murdered and her body was found dumped at Nanyuki river on the morning of November 1st but the police have revealed any investigations into her death. Njoki had last been seen at the Nanyuki Police station before she was murdered.