'Your vote determines your life,' Boniface Mwangi urges Kenyans to vote in large numbers

Mwangi, who was speaking on a Citizen Digital-moderated open mic session on Twitter on Tuesday, is of the opinion that an active voting population promotes democracy in that the more Kenyans avail themselves at the ballot, the more politicians will be forced to represent their interests once they assume office.

"Your vote determines the quality of your life, how safe you'll be, if your schools will have books and teachers and if your hospital will have medicine and doctors. That's the reason why you vote, because if you don't vote, you are saying that I don't care," said Mwangi.

The vocal activist likewise urged Kenyans to not take their individual votes for granted underscoring that every vote matters and that elections are often decided by the smallest of margins.

According to Mwangi, once Kenyans realise the worth of their votes, leaders holding elective seats will be considerably more representative.

"So voting is the responsibility of every single citizen whose of age. If you don't like the government, you vote them out. If you like someone, vote them in, but don't just say I won't vote because I'm apathetic because by not voting you're giving us a bad choice," he said.

He went on to say that Kenyans, for the most part, have lost confidence in elected leaders owing to the fact that aspiring politicians often make many promises in the days leading up to the elections only to renege on them once they assume office.

"They promised stadiums, jobs and safety but these were never delivered.  The majority of leaders who have been leading this country for a long time are liars," said Mwangi.

Mwangi consequently slammed the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), for allegedly not raising enough awareness on the importance of voting and spending too much time on registering voters. 

"Voter registry should be a continuous process, but the IEBC doesn't do that. They focus on the last six months of the election year to register people for election," he said.