'I cried, but I never quit’: Hanifa Adan opens up on journey through online abuse and activism

Renowned activist Hanifa Adan has spoken out on the verbal abuse and online criticism that she says almost made her hang her freedom fighting boots.

Hanifa recounted how she occasionally found herself breaking down due to trolls on her social media pages.

The 28-year-old, who gained national prominence during last year’s Gen Z protests for being an ardent government critic and online mobiliser, recalled a time when her perceived social media darlings turned against her, roasting her for weeks.

She vividly recalls the exact post on June 27, 2024 where she was christened by a section of netizens as a “sellout” after dissuading Gen Z protesters from marching to State House, two days after the historic storming of Parliament.

Some of the verbal attacks, she said, were hard to bear and she often burst into tears, as Kenyans on X (formerly Twitter) crowded her inbox.

“I have never deleted those tweets and I stand by them; we did not have the numbers but everyone attacked me that day and I cried, honestly it was a hard day,” she said in an interview on NTV.

Despite upholding the tweet where she directed her hundreds of thousands of followers on X to pay a visit to those nursing injuries at the Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) instead, Hanifa insists it was the best move to avoid a direct confrontation with police officers, which would only lead to more bloodshed.

“The attacks, the malice, the misogyny, all the public scrutiny and everything that happens…I just don’t let people project on me,” a teary Hanifa explained.

The activist avers that she has now developed a thick skin, as she recalled yet another scandal revolving around the expenditure of more than Ksh.30 million that was sent to her by Kenyans to take care of the Gen Z protest victims.

In her defence, she noted that the criticism was misguided, underscoring that she did not even handle the funds directly.

“The M-Changa team came up with a strategy of me verifying the cases and then I sent it to them; I sent the ID, the hospital name, the name of the patient, the documents of the hospital and the bank account and then they would send the money directly to the hospital… for burials we would send the postmortem reports and the ID of the parents of the families so they send the money to them,” she explained.

Having started her activism journey back in 2022 in Korogocho slums while highlighting a drainage problem online, Hanifa is now confident of the power of social media, as it led to Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja addressing the issues that had bedevilled the slum for over three decades.

“I just took pictures one day and said No! I went online and said I was dedicating 30 days to highlight and campaign for the issue until it is fixed and fortunately enough it gained momentum and attention and people got involved in it and they were telling Sakaja to fix this until it was too much for him,” she narrated.

“He promised to fix it on the third day, it was fixed but not properly. The rains came again and the place was even worse than it was. I went again and again until it was fixed nicely. From that moment I realized how powerful social media is because we managed to fix a problem that had existed for more than 30 years in less than 3 months.”

From Korogocho, the youthful leader turned her guns at her home county, Mandera, and continued to blow the corruption whistle following an alleged case of the rich people benefitting hugely from bursaries made for the poor.

Her post on X went viral, even triggering the county bosses to reach out to her father, in a bid to coerce her to stop.

“It gained momentum and it was crazy, it trended for days until the county had a crisis meeting and called my dad to tell me to stop. Eventually, I did because my dad had problems and they were bothering him with calls,” stated Hanifa.

“After I left, people continued highlighting it since we had a hashtag of #FreeMandera. People shared any information they wanted to be revealed.”

Hanifa, who is now part of presidential hopeful Okiya Omtatah’s exploratory committee, is dusting her feet as she gears for more protests in 2025, amid increased abductions and disappearances.

She appealed to Kenyans to start treating plain-clothed police officers who abduct and kidnap perceived government critics as criminals.