Former President Uhuru Kenyatta has made a return to Twitter, 3 years after leaving the platform.
The then President’s office confirmed the deletion of his personal social media accounts, including the popular @UKenyatta handle that the former President owned and ran (or his staffers did), citing his discretion to do so as they were personal accounts.
President Kenyatta later came out to publicly reveal that he had left social media (especially Twitter) due to the increased number of insults and distasteful comments aimed his way.
At the time, the President’s Twitter account, with over 3.5 million followers, was the most followed by a Kenyan. He was also one of the most followed serving African leaders on the platform at the time. Sitting President William Ruto commands a following of over 5.5 million on Twitter.
For the remainder of his term, President Kenyatta used the main State House channels for official communication on social media apps including Twitter. Those State House accounts have since switched hands and are now being managed by the current President’s communication team.
Former President Kenyatta’s communications team has reportedly confirmed to sections of the press that, indeed, it his him on Twitter as @4thPresidentKe. The account had the name “Office of the 3rd Retired President of Kenya” when it popped up earlier in the day but appears to have since been edited to “Office of the 4th President of Kenya”.
