Courting trouble is Dennis Itumbi’s daily cup of tea

Mr Dennis Itumbi came to the national limelight with his withering attacks on the International Criminal Court (ICC), which in 2010 had issued summonses against Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, Cabinet minister William Ruto and four other prominent Kenyans over their alleged involvement in the post-election violence that rocked the country in 2007/2008.

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At one point, the ICC claimed that Mr Itumbi had hacked its systems so as to reveal the names of witnesses set to testify against the suspects.

In 2012, the police arrested him over this and detained him for four days but did not charge him. He sued the government for illegal detention and was awarded Sh5 million by Justice Joseph Onguto last year.

For his dogged defence of the ICC suspects, he was named the digital director in the State House-based Presidential Strategic Communications Unit (PSCU) after Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto largely rode the anti-ICC ticket to come to power in the 2013 presidential elections.

In his new posting, the clean-shaven blogger not only continued his acidic attacks on the international court, but also broadened the targets of his barbs to include perceived opponents of the Jubilee administration, among them the media and civil society.

When the government was being assailed from all sides for its perceived poor performance during its first term, Mr Itumbi deployed the Twitter hashtag #SystemyaFacts, which he had popularised before joining State House.

With the hashtag, he hoped to correct what he, and generally the government, perceived to be erroneous information deliberately or inadvertently being pushed against them.

But it wasn’t long after he was appointed that rumours started reaching the media of a major rift between him and his boss, Mr Manoah Esipisu, who was the head of the PSCU.

In 2014, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) profiled him as among 50 students from the Kenya Institute of Mass Communication whose academic credentials are questionable.

COERCION
According to an NIS security vetting brief for the State House job, Mr Itumbi was the leader of a riot that forced the management of the college to award him and his class diplomas in broadcast journalism while they were enrolled to do a certificate course in the same academic programme.

The NIS report described Mr Itumbi as a “self-motivated go-getter who uses any means at his disposal including blackmail, bribery and other forms of coercion to get his way”. He denounced the report.

In May 2015, he was on the receiving end of the ire of Interior Cabinet Joseph Nkaissery following a suspected Al-Shabaab attack on security forces in Yumbis, Garissa County.

While Mr Nkaissery (who died in 2017) was dismissing media reports that lives had been lost in the incident, Mr Itumbi caused more confusion when he posted a condolence message purportedly from the President.

“I mourn and pray with the family and friends of the police officers who lost their lives in Yumbis,” read the tweet, which was later deleted. “They died protecting us. I salute them.”

While it was later established that one officer had indeed died in the attack, Mr Nkaissery felt that Mr Itumbi’s post had undermined the government’s messaging efforts.

“The fellows at the State House must get this message right: If they misinform the public, we will get hold of them,” he warned.

In June 2016, it was President Kenyatta’s turn to reprimand Mr Itumbi and his three fellow directors — Edward Irungu, Munyori Buku and Eric Ng’eno — over the perceived combative manner of their handling of State House communications.

The rebuke came after the quartet released what was seen as an unnecessarily hard-hitting rejoinder to a New York Times special report on the ICC cases, which had collapsed by then.