Uhuru Returns To Twitter After Three Years

On November 25, 2020, during the launch of the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) signature collection phase held at the Kenyatta International Conference Center (KICC), he disclosed that incessant trolls and bullies had forced him to exit the app abruptly.

"I'm not a person for the eons, even I left Twitter...I saw that app as a waste of time and full of insults and nothing else that goes on. You sit there and read without sleeping 'what are they saying'...ooh, what is this other one saying..."

"You make a phone call complaining 'have you seen what this person has posted about me'...I'd rather sleep or talk to my wife (Margaret Kenyatta) I share stories with her before I sleep, I wake up and go on with work and life moves on," he narrated much to the amusement of the crowd.

When Uhuru's social media accounts were deactivated in 2019, it was believed that this would have allowed for the remedial measures to be undertaken.

"On account of unauthorized access to the official social media handles of H.E the President of the Republic of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, all official social media handles for the President have been temporarily suspended to allow for the necessary remedial measures to be undertaken.

"It seems the President’s stand on corruption has generated all manner of reactions," stated State House Chief of Staff, Nzioka Waita at the time.

He also pulled the plug on his Facebook account and has since returned with a new page dubbed 'Office of the 3rd Retired President of Kenya', similar to the Twitter one. His debut post described him opening the Third Inter-Congolese Consultations of the Nairobi Peace Process at Safari Park Hotel in Nairobi.

"These consultations are a follow-up to the Inaugural Inter-Congolese Peace Consultation (Nairobi I) that was held in April 2022; the Second Inter-Congolese Peace Consultations, a scoping and mapping mission in Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu (Nairobi II) which took place in May 2022 in the DRC. 

"This culminated in the 22nd Ordinary Summit of the East African Community Heads of State and Government, which appointed H.E. (Rtd) President Uhuru Kenyatta as the EAC Facilitator of the Nairobi Peace Process. The meeting aims at accelerating the ongoing regional efforts to attain sustainable peace and security in Eastern DRC," the post read.

Interestingly, he has taken steps to avoid another scenario of being bullied off Twitter by limiting comments to people he has mentioned that can reply. Twitter was the first account he shut down before Facebook.

He faces a race to catch up to his successor, William Ruto's Twitter account which boasts of over 5.5 million followers, behind Egypt's President Abdel Fattah El Sisi in terms of ranking across the African continent, with 5.8 million followers.

"You may wish to know that my predecessor, President Uhuru Kenyatta here, and myself were on different sides of the political contest two months ago and the competition was stiff. After the elections, I met his excellency the president, looked at him in the eye and I told him, 'Mr President, you have started a very important process in the EAC and I would like you to continue that process,' and he told me he was ready to do it despite all that had gone on.

"Because of the interest of our nation, region, continent and because peace was important to Kenya and DRC and our region, Kenyatta has done a wonderful job as he facilitates this process because we value peace," Ruto endorsed Uhuru after their first physical meeting since the handover on Tuesday, September 13.

Here's a past video of Uhuru revealing why he left Twitter: