Octopizzo, a multiple award-winning Kenyan Hip Hop star and philanthropist, appears to have thrown his support behind Roots Party presidential candidate Prof. George Wajackoyah ahead of the August 9 showdown.
The ‘Tom Mboya’ hitmaker supported Wajackoyah’s candidacy during a Citizen TV Twitter Spaces session on Tuesday night, saying he has the most concrete manifesto that resonates with young people.
According to the activist, the lawyer-turned-selling politician’s point of producing bhang and harvesting snake poison for export to boost the country’s economy if elected to the highest office makes sense to him and other young people.
He stated that, in contrast to his three other competitors for the State House job, whose pledges he described as theoretical, Wajackoyah has managed to separate himself from the pack by being more practical with the solutions he is proposing.
“I haven’t heard the best manifesto apart from Wajackoyah, and I’m saying Wajackoyah not to be sarcastic but because I think for the first time in so many years of listening to politicians campaigning, his manifesto was about economics. Everything was about ‘if we do this, we will make this money. If we do this, we will pay this…’ Before it’s just been tribal, or ‘this person is bad, I’m better than this. I’m not corrupt…’” said Octopizzo.
“That is the first leader to actually vie for the seat without anyone asking ‘what is his tribe?’ The people considered big have not even had like really dope manifestos. It is the same old stuff, it’s theory. Theory is like going to school, then you pass Biology and because you pass Biology in theory you think you’re also going to pass the practicals.”
“But the practicals are surgery, and surgery you need to be more careful. You need to be more calculative, and I feel like everything that most of them are giving us is not calculated, except Wajackoyah,” he added.
Octopizzo also sought to debunk claims that the country’s youth are uninterested in voting in the upcoming elections.
He claims that the youth are simply unaware of the electoral process because civic education has not been properly implemented by the relevant government bodies.
The rapper went on to say that the country’s youth are also interested in voting for people who understand the issues that affect them and can offer practical solutions.
“I don’t think there’s a very big number of people that don’t want to vote, it’s just that they don’t know how to vote. The civic education that happens in this country is like 2% compared to 98% that actually should be done, so most young people don’t know the process; most young people don’t know why they should vote,” he said.
“I’ve been doing civic education since March until now and every town I have gone to…I have gone to six towns…every young person wants to vote, but they want to vote for somebody who looks like them; they want to vote for somebody who knows what they’re going through and not someone who will tell them ‘vijana vijana nyinyi ndio viongozi wa kesho.’ People are tired of that narrative.”
He added: “It’s sad, but that’s just the truth. So I don’t think young people don’t know what’s going on, for the first time they’re curious like ‘ohh so if we sell weed, we could actually make more money. Ohh, so we can actually sell poison…’ Nobody has ever talked about these things. Like how are we going to make money? How are we going to create jobs? That’s the most important thing for the young people.
“But the rest are just like ‘tutawapatia kazi’ – that’s not a guarantee. But ‘tutapata kazi tukifanya hivi’ is a guarantee. I don’t think there’s a strong relatable manifesto from most of those guys that is practical, except Wajackoyah.”
