An image circulated online showing heavy anti-riot police presence at Kamkunji grounds in Nairobi on December 7, 2022, is falsely captioned.
The image was shared on Twitter through the Twitter handle @Silasowitinjura, insinuating that there was a heavy police presence at the Kamkunji grounds to block ODM leader Raila Odinga’s rally at the venue.
“Current state at #Kamukunji ground. This is bad. Dear president William Ruto and CS Kindiki let’s allow the constitution to take charge and don’t provoke the people power (sic),” the user captioned the image.
However, Business Today conducted a reverse image search on Google which showed that the image was taken in Kisumu on July 7, 2014.
The image, taken by Moses Eshiwani from Reuters, was published on July 9, 2014, in an article by The Christian Science Monitor.
On December 7, 2022, Mr Odinga and the Azimio la Umoja-One Kenya Alliance held a political rally at the Kamkunji grounds, which went on successfully without police interruption. The rally was aimed at giving Kenyans an opportunity to share their views on the state of affairs in the country.
A day before the rally, the National Police Service assured the Azimio coalition of adequate security during their event.
The image shared online suggesting that the police blocked the planned rally by Azimio Coalition is therefore false.
This fact check was published by Business Today with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck and African Fact-Checking Alliance.
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