Wananchi turn President Ruto’s X Space into a ‘follow for follow’ session

The first X Space session started past the slated time of 2pm at around 2:20pm, after the President had held a press conference in which he announced a series of austerity measures the government is taking to handle the Ksh. 346 billion budget gap, following the rejection of the Finance Bill 2024.

 The first X Space ended after eight minutes, without any conversation happening as hitches were experienced.

 The total number of listeners on the first space was about 63,000 listeners.

 The second X space lasted 13 minutes without making any progress before dropping. It had about 90,000 listeners.

 The final attempt at hosting the space lasted 22 minutes, with the bulk of the time spent trying to sort out technical hitches marked with loud silence as some of those handling the backend forgot to mute the President's microphone, leaving listeners hearing the goings-on.

 In between the long pauses of silence, Kenyans on  X (KOX) took to the comments section and engaged in their usual peculiar behaviours, with many saying, “follow for a follow back”, as people on the platform decided to use the space to get to know each other and build the number of their followers.

 While all this was going on, KOX were treated to more than four parallel X Spaces being hosted by different individuals in a bid to counter the President’s space. 

 At least two of the counter spaces adopted a similar title to the hashtag of the President’s official X Space: #EngagethePresident.

 As a last resort, the government opted to have President Ruto address Gen Z and other X listeners using influencer, Otero’s X account.

 With Otero as the host, State House spokesperson, Hussein Mohammed, was a speaker and the President joined the conversation using the State House X handle, rather than his personal handle.

 He started by apologizing for the more than hour-long delay, blaming the hitches on the challenges that come with using technology.

 He went on to say that he opted to engage citizens on the X platform because he had been accused of not listening to what the people want and was there to prove that he indeed listens.

 The President said that the rejection of the Finance Bill was as a result of propaganda and that Kenyans will come to see that the Bill was beneficial.

Listen to Citizen Digital's  X Space on the impact of the anti-Finance Bill protests and other X Space episodes here.