Gangsta's Paradise: How goons are quickly becoming Kenya's alternative law enforcement

These characters, armed with wicked intention and a rapacious appetite for blood, flooded the streets in their scary numbers, patrolling the alleyways, brandishing their weapons, baring their fangs and daring their targets for an all-out daylight warfare.

Unlike regular criminals, who operate under the cover of darkness, lurking in the shadows and steering clear of the police, these emboldened thugs were a different genre; they didn't appear to shy away from breaking the law, if anything, they scouted the streets clothed in audacious gall, their intentions clear and their faces intentionally revealed.

Anyone taking a keen look quickly understood that these crooks were not operating amorphously; these were expertly chaperoned gangs with explicit instructions from their untouchable kingpins.

Multiple Kenyan cities grappled with the proliferation of goons, all sent with clear instructions to dismantle Gen Z groupings, wreck street havoc, scattle crowds and 'restore sanity' in a country that was quickly tearing apart under the dizzying weight of nationwide angst.

As they fearlessly marched down the streets, from Nairobi to Eldoret, the police marched alongside them, providing them with protection, authority and brazen complicity - in an unprecedented display of a rare police-criminal fraternization.

Swaleh Sonko, a notorious goon mobiliser, even shot to overnight TikTok infamy. He appeared on multiple YouTube gossip channels discussing his role in recruiting troublemakers, the underworld intricacies, political coordination and the highly-coordinated street manoeuvres.

But even as the demonstrations died down, these hired hooligans didn't seem too eager to step back from their sinister roles. After all, it was paying well, didn't hurt their images, didn't get them arrested and could afford them a false sense of power and fleeting authority.

And just like that, Kenya started slowly sliding in a 'Goon Republic', with every politician or influential power-broker gathering his own gang of ready-to-deploy hoodlums, a clear exploitation of a security hangover in a country where the powerful do not hesitate to use force to bully their way around.

These stick-weilding, stone-throwing ruffians were now quickly reassigned - their new role now was to storm former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua's gatherings, kick up a storm, whip their way through the VIP and stone the SUVs parked at the yard.

From Kariobangi to Limuru, Nyeri to JKIA, Gachagua has become the principal target of goons who have violently poured into funerals, churches and rallies, scattering mourners, scaring worshippers, desecrating pulpits and launching crude projectiles at political speakers.

The 'goonification' of the nation slowly, and steadfastly, started moving from mere political gatherings; it became a potent tool of 'law enforcement', with power barons now illegally converting court papers into lethal missiles.

You need to evict tenants from City Council housing? Send goons. Your court defendant has refused to heed to a court ruling? Send goons. You're eyeing prime property whose owner is still clinging onto it? Send goons. You're eyeing a gubernatorial seat and want 'church' women to shout down the incumbent? Send religious goons.

Within 24 hours this week, two former power brokers and government figures in past regimes came out to accuse goons of attacking their premises, threatening their lives, attempting to forcefully evict them and acting in flagrant disregard of the law in a clear demonstration of political backing and police protection.

On March 12, both former Cabinet Secretary Raphael Tuju and former Principal Secretary Irungu Nyakera dominated headlines after hundreds of goons stormed their respective properties in Nairobi and Kisumu. In both instances, the goons appeared unusually galvanised, as they bodaciously scaled walls, vandalised property, caused a ruckus and defied orders, evidently intent on executing orders from their masters.

Kenyans watched in confused shock as two of some of the most powerful and unfathomably wealthy individuals in the Uhuru Kenyatta regime were blatantly attacked, pushed back and intimidated, as police idly looked on - or stayed away.

Welcome to the Kenyan 'Gangstas Paradise' - a ruthless, brutally violent and vicious gangland where blood-thirsty cliques roam the streets waiting to be deployed, waiting to pounce, waiting to attack and waiting to wag their tails at the slightest whisper of their criminal masters.

Everyone, even those in power, is alarmed at the exponential rate at which this has become the new norm.

Suba North MP Millie Odhiambo expressed her fear, writing: "The rise of Gangster culture tolerated by authority will haunt Kenya. 100 gangsters were used to try and evict a businessman from premises in Kisumu. Similar gangsters were used to hound Hon Tuju yesterday. Soon, like Haiti, we might need other nations to assist us deal with gangsters."

In a country drowning in joblessness, State-sanctioned impunity and a rapid rise of ravenous barons gluttonously eyeing their neighbour's property, and in a country where the police can quickly be silenced by a phone call, and replaced by temporary vigilante, the goon economy is about to get astronomically huge - and dangerously lucrative.

Statistically, you're one goon away from homelessness. Or a broken jaw.

Like Coolio said in 'Gangsta's Paradise': "Fool, death ain't nothin' but a heart beat away."