Is the long time chief opposition leader Raila Odinga now being used to advertise brands? Is he either being used to advertise the star newspaper?
Well, on Friday morning, the star newspaper senior editor Oliver Mathenge who has a huge following on social media made a post seemingly aimed at selling the brand.
With a following of close to 250,000 people on twitter, the post reached close to 500,000 Kenyans on Twitter through retweets and likes.
The post was captioned, ” Smart people read the star” with indeed a photo of a smart person reading it. The smart person indeed is Raila, who is pictured keenly reading the star newspaper inside a plane.
Smart People Read @TheStarKenya
@EvansDims pic.twitter.com/qUv69wGCTf— Oliver Mathenge (@OliverMathenge) May 24, 2019
With the coming of the handshake between Raila and President Uhuru Kenyatta, the ODM Leader gained relevance not just from his enemies but across the world. Last year, the handshake won an international peace accord award in London.
Mr Mathenge has been accused of being a pro-Jubilee government for quiet sometime. Today is his birthday as well, and perhaps selling a brand could sell!
But has Raila been turned into an advertising tool offlate?
When the government launched mass registration for the National Integrated Information Management System (NIIMS) where the government is seeking to enroll Kenyans to a unique namba dubbed Huduma Namba, Raila oversaw the launch in Mombasa.
He has been a big government critic, but this time, in the spirit of the handshake, Raila endorsed Huduma Namba despite several protests from Kenyans and Human Rights activists.
As if it was not enough, Raila was used on the billboards to advertise the process, with a caption, ” Nimejisajili…. je wewe?”
Well, with huduma namba, we understand that he did it willingly in the spirit of the handshake but with the case of the star newspaper, it is not known whether he posed for the photo willingly, or whether he was aware it was going to be used in selling the newspaper’s brand.