Politicians can't stop sponsoring their posts on X and Kenyans are now tired

Lately, Kenyan leaders seem to have adopted a rather odd fascination with sponsoring their messages on X, a trend which seems to have caught on pretty fast and is being applied by almost everyone in all facets of leadership.

If a leader has some 'important' issue they'd love to highlight, and are pinching to have it reach as wide an audience as possible, they are wasting no time in clicking the 'promote' section on X, some doing it so haphazardly that it has become ridiculously distressing.

Every time one logs into X, they're slapped with a loud 'AD' from yet another politician or bureaucrat, with everyone throwing everything around, from their personal gripe with various sectors of government to them tooting their own horn on the imagined successes of their administration.

Leading this pack is Public Health and Professional Standards Principal Secretary Mary Muthoni who appears to have set aside a budget just for promoting her tweets.

The PS appears to sponsor almost every announcement she makes, among them the heavily controversial Social Health Authority (SHA), as well as her achievements in office.

PS Muthoni's actions appear to have rubbed off on almost everyone as now, Kenyans have endured a barrage of meaningless X promotions from the likes of Kileleshwa MCA Robert Alai, Kamukunji MP Yusuf Hassan and even Nyaribari Chache MP Zaheer Jhanda.

The vexing thing about these widely sponsored tweets is that none of them appears to be addressing any serious national issues - it's always the leaders rambling about mundane issues that only serve to project their images, prop up their leadership and massage their egos, nothing substantial or significant to the average Kenyan.

Some of these leaders are actually sponsoring outright propaganda, laced with brazen lies and cheap disinformation, with the mindless belief that sponsoring the post on X gives it credibility and washes away it's vain emptiness.

Scrolling down X has now become a nightmarish affair as one risks a chance of bumping into these thoughtless tweets posing as 'X ads', as yet another politician harasses you with their preposterous sentiments.

The ads have essentially become less informative and more of a tedious nuisance.

We expect ads from institutions and corporations, we expect Ads from renowned entities and brands and we expect ads from emerging businesses and individuals, but not from every little Parliamentary charlatan who just can't limit their political lunacy to the confines of their everyday circles.

It would probably make sense if a senior leader would prioritise an Ad that addresses pressing issues like the SHA debacle, the economic turmoil or a firm stance against the many government ills bedevelling the country but instead, Kenyans are being swamped with pedestrian material which have no business to do with them in the first place, and which do not even deserve that wide a reach, anyway. 

Also, the most jarring thing about these Kenyan political ads is that they pop out virtually out of nowhere - they're not even tied to the content one may currently be consuming, they don't seem to be necessarily targeting an individual and they may not even align with one’s X algorithm, meaning they're randomly placed and have no business being in one’s timeline.

Back in 2023, X owner Elon Musk apologised for 'irrelevant X ads', further adding that the company was taking the necessary steps and would be tying ads to keywords and topics in tweets, similar to how Google Search works.

He wrote, "Sorry for showing you so many irrelevant & annoying ads on Twitter! We’re taking the (obvious) corrective action of tying ads to keywords and topics in tweets, like Google does with search. This will improve contextual relevance dramatically."

As things stand, Kenyans are already overstimulated by numbing political rhetoric and the last thing they want to wake up to is yet another politician flooding their timeline with even more nonsensical sponsored propaganda - and leaving them even more exasperated.