Outspoken Lawyer Miguna Miguna has vehemently objected to President William Ruto’s Sh1 billion Digital ID project which is set to be rolled out from the 29th of this month.
In a lengthy statement today, Miguna made it clear that he does not support the project.
He gave five reasons detailing why the ID, estimated to gobble up to Ksh1 billion, should not be prioritised by the current regime.
With a direct block-lettered subject line, ‘I oppose the imposition of the National Digital ID in Kenya‘, the lawyer argued that the country, which falls in the third-world category, should expend its resources to dealing with other pressing matters such as high unemployment, universal healthcare, and homelessness.
“Kenya lacks the legal, technological and human capacity to protect privacy and prevent misuse of personal digital data. Kenya wasn’t even able to detect and prevent WorldCoin from illegally harvesting personal data from its citizens for more than one year,” argued Miguna.
“Kenya lacks the digital infrastructure to prevent cyber attacks, including hacking, hence making the harvesting, processing and storage of digital identity prone to abuse and illegal poaching.”
The lawyer further read malice in the intended rollout arguing that the state had failed to incorporate public participation and likened it to other failed projects like the Building Bridges Initiative and the Huduma Namba.
Miguna argued that developed countries like the United States and Canada were yet to introduce compulsory digital identification because their citizens are opposed to it.
“The Kenya Kwanza must refrain from forcing Kenyans to pay for another expensive white elephant with dubious origins,” he told his 2.4 million followers.
“Kenyans deserve to have clean running water, electricity, food and healthcare per household before anyone lectures us about digital identification.”
