A university comrade who survived a shooting incident on Tuesday, June 17, 2025, in Nairobi has sent out a bold message to President William Ruto.
Philip Oketch, a Kenyatta University student, took a bullet to his neck but survived after being rushed to Kenyatta National Hospital following the chaos in the Nairobi Central Business District (CBD).
Speaking a day after comrades paid him a visit at the hospital on Wednesday, June 18, 2025, Oketch, in a show of defiance, dared the president that they would continue to take to the streets until they got him out of power.
Defiant
“Allow me to send a message to the so-called Commander-in-Chief, President William Ruto. We are tired. We want to tell you that this country does not belong to anyone. This country belongs to our forefathers, the future generation, and us, the citizens of this country,” the student stated.
The comrade warned the president to rein in the police, who have come under scrutiny for targeting innocent and unarmed civilians.
“We want you to take control of your robots in police uniform who swore to take care of the citizens, but they have proven that they can be a burning problem towards the unarmed, sober, innocent citizens of Kenya,” he stated.
Emergency treatment
“I want to tell Ruto that no amount of threats and intimidation will break us; the streets belong to the people, and we will be on the streets until you are out of power,” he added.
News of Oketch’s shooting was first relayed by Embakasi East MP Babu Owino on Tuesday, June 17, 2025.
The legislator, in a statement on his Facebook page, stated that the young Kenyan has been put under emergency treatment.
In a related development, the MP confirmed that he came in contact with sixteen young persons nursing gun wounds at the Kenyatta National Hospital upon visiting the facility on Wednesday.
Babu Statement on Tuesday’s protests
The MP decried what he termed as deliberate, targeted attacks on unarmed civilians.
“This morning, I visited victims of police brutality admitted at Kenyatta National Hospital. Sixteen young Kenyans were brought in with injuries, nine have since been discharged, and seven remain hospitalized. Of the seven still in the wards, two are in critical condition — one of whom is the young man seen in widely circulated footage being shot in cold blood yesterday.
What I witnessed today is nothing short of a massacre. One patient has seven gunshot wounds to the back. Two others were shot in the eye. Another has a gunshot wound in the leg. One was shot in the neck, and another in the lower back. These were not accidents. These were deliberate, targeted attacks on unarmed civilians — children of this republic,” Babu’s statement read.
The MP, while condemning the brutality meted out against the young Kenyans, cited the president as the man bearing the ultimate responsibility for the misconduct of the police.
This is not the Kenya we want. No Kenyan should be hunted down for expressing their views or for standing up for their future. The use of live bullets against protesters, many of whom were peacefully exercising their constitutional rights, is criminal and must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.
I call upon President William Ruto to take full responsibility for these atrocities. The blood of these young men and women is on the hands of those who gave the shoot-to-kill orders — and silence at the highest level of government is complicity.
We will not be cowed. We will not stop demanding justice. And we will not stop standing with the people of Kenya until those responsible are held to account.
