Glib-tongued ‘selfie king' loves to stoke controversy

Steven Mbogo. When he is not showing off his gun and bulletproof vest, he is making wild claims on one platform or another; claims that sometimes backfire on him. ILLUSTRATION | JOHN NYAGAH | NATION

What you need to know:

  • Failed parliamentary candidate with dubious background, it would appear, will hog attention, one way or the other.

  • From telling lies to exploiting human distress and posting photos posing with a gun just to show off.

  • And his legion of fans, mostly females, have been cheering on the man with big guns but who often misfires when he talks.

Today is the 20th day of the month, which is also politician Steve Mbogo’s nth day of revolution around the word “controversy”.

Given his headline-grabbing antics at the location of Tuesday’s terror attack along 14 Riverside Drive, it appears that controversy is what makes the flashy politician’s world go round.

When he is not showing off his gun and bulletproof vest, he is making wild claims on one platform or another; claims that sometimes backfire on him.

Kenyans will remember the time he truncated the name off a university professor’s biography, inserted his and presented it as his description.

What’s more, he has claimed to have been declared East Africa’s richest under-30 man by Forbes in 2014, a record that cannot be located.

Observers will also recall a time when Mr Mbogo claimed on TV that he was one of the board members of Fly540, only for the airline’s owner to come out later to express his shock at the claims and to threaten a lawsuit.

Some will even remember a website the politician ran until sometime in 2015, where he claimed that, among other things, he owned 12 four-star hotels in Kenya, 32 apartment blocks in Nairobi, two insurance companies in Uganda, six night clubs spread in Nakuru, Kisumu and Nairobi, and a flight training academy in Wilson Airport. He added that he co-owned two law firms and three stock brokerage companies.

Other Kenyans might also remember a question posed by activist Boniface Mwangi, one of his competitors in the race to be Starehe MP in 2017, regarding Mr Mbogo’s source of wealth.

“Steve Mbogo claims to be a businessman. What business does he do? Who does he employ? How much money does he pay in taxes? Let us know these things,” said Mr Mwangi at a televised interview.

$8,000 SUIT

In the last General Election, Mr Mwangi and Mr Mbogo were in the race to represent the constituency where State House sits. They competed alongside musician Charles Njagua Kanyi and five other candidates.

Mr Kanyi of Jubilee party emerged the winner with 61,266 votes while Mr Mbogo (ODM) came second with 38,292 as Mr Mwangi’s 15,831 votes placed him third through Ukweli Party.

Even during campaigns, Mr Mbogo did not waver from his script of courting controversy. There is a time he claimed that the most expensive suit he owned had cost him $8,000 (Sh813,520).

“I have a Masimo Bossi (suit), which goes for about $8,000. That was a gift I got for myself,” he said. “It is what makes me feel confident. If I dress in that suit and go for a meeting, believe me, I’m gonna strike that deal.”

While some people love to dismiss Mr Mbogo’s antics as populist, he often feels he has the noblest of intentions.

For example at the scene of the DusitD2 attack, where images of him carrying a rare gun went viral — leading to heaps of criticism for his apparent betrayal of the spirit of the moment — he has explained that he was all about saving lives, having come face-to-face with terrorism in 2013 at the Westgate attack that left 67 dead.

“[At Westgate] I managed to jump two floors down to safety but I opted to remain at the scene instead of going home. I stayed from the day of the attack till the end of the operation whereby I helped with the voluntary assistance the rescuers and other Kenyans of goodwill,” he said in an Instagram post on Thursday.

On the day of the attack, he told Ebru TV, he was forwarded a text about the attack at DusitD2, which made him rush home for his gun to head there to save people.

“I’m a regular client of Dusit. Actually the owners of the property are very good friends of mine,” he said.

“Remember, I was a victim before. I’m not a coward; let me tell you. I’m a person with a strong character. I said that as much as they will call for reinforcement, I have to be there,” he said, adding that together with other civilian gun holders, they “started going in and evacuating people, building by building”.

SH40 MILLION YACHT

But even the interviews he has been conducting amid the Dusit whirlwind point at his publicity-seeking self.

In 2015, BBC editor Larry Madowo, then a presenter with The Trend show that runs on NTV every Friday, called out Mr Mbogo for sending several emissaries as he pushed for appearance in the show.

“They (emissaries) rattled off his supposed achievements and the boldface names he supposedly hosted for his birthday at that Abu Dhabi event he couldn’t pronounce,” Mr Madowo would later write in his column.

The Abu Dhabi event Mr Madowo mentioned was all about an invoice Mr Mbogo uploaded on his Instagram page, claiming to have hired a Sh40 million yacht for American musicians Trey Songz and Big Sean.

“There were no pictures of Steve hanging out with Trey or Sean. Would that be too much to ask for a sponsor?” posed a local blog that questioned many details on his life that didn’t add up.

Talking of Instagram, it is through that platform that he has clarified that his gun is a normal shotgun and not a high-calibre rifle that civilians should not have.

“It is a Derya-Anakon 12-gauge shotgun with a pump action magazine-fed which is within use for a licensed firearm holder like I am,” he posted on Thursday.

And his legion of fans commenting on that Instagram post, which mainly comes from the female gender, has been cheering on the man with big guns but who often misfires when he talks.