BREAKING: Utumishi Girls Academy has been closed for investigations over the dormitory fire that left 16 student dead continue. Education CS Julius Ogamba says those responsible for the fire will be charged.
Oya @DCI_Kenya
I write this with a very heavy heart.
Children are disappearing in this country, and the silence around it is becoming louder than the cries of the grieving parents left behind.
Every day, families wake up hoping their missing child will walk back through the door. Every night, mothers sleep holding photographs instead of their children.
Child protection agencies estimate that nearly 23 children are reported missing or disappear daily. Twenty-three. That is not just a number. Those are school uniforms left hanging behind doors. Those are unfinished homework books. Those are empty seats at dinner tables. Those are voices that will never again shout “Mom, I’m home.”
Yet we rarely see urgent updates, nationwide alerts, or public pressure from the authorities when these children vanish.
But when it comes to harmless social media users, critics, or ordinary citizens expressing themselves online, the response is immediate. Suddenly there is technology, speed, coordination, tracking, and arrests. Safaricom data is accessed. Software is deployed. People are traced within hours.
So Kenyans are left asking painful questions, If you can find someone over a Facebook post or a Twitter reply, why can’t you find the people stealing our children?
If surveillance systems work so efficiently against citizens speaking online, why do they fail when innocent children disappear?
Who is kidnapping our children?
A nation that cannot protect its children is a nation bleeding from the inside.
Parents are now living in fear of ordinary things: A child walking to school. A child going to buy bread. A child playing outside with friends. A child boarding a matatu alone.
We are raising children in a country where “Be home before dark” has slowly turned into “Please come back alive.”
And the most terrifying part is that Some of these children are never found. Some are found violated. Some are found dead. Some simply vanish as if they never existed.
“How many tiny coffins must be buried before this becomes a national emergency?”
“How did we become a society where parents memorize morgues before they memorize their children’s futures?”
I know speaking like this may make me a target too. Maybe this post will be monitored. Maybe I will be threatened. But silence is becoming another form of burial, and I refuse to bury my conscience while children are being buried in the ground.
The lives of our children matter more than bruised egos, online criticism, or political image management.
We are asking you to treat missing children with the same energy used to hunt down government critics online.
Because somewhere tonight, another mother is waiting at the door for a child who will never come home. And that should disturb every single one of us.
Protests over high fuel prices take a different turn in Kitale, Trans-Nzoia County as residents turn a section of the bus park into a running track, with touts and drivers engaging in relay races.
North Imenti MP Rahim Dawood was chased away by protesters during the ongoing Matatu Strike after attempting to address the crowd hahah leo ni mbaiyaaaa sana!!