Why Safaricom has sued blogger Cyprian Nyakundi
Safaricom has sued a popular blogger claiming that he has defamed the company by posting baseless and unsubstantiated claims about the telco on his blog.
In a suit notice published in the local dailies, Safaricom, through its lawyer Ogetto, Otachi and Company Advocates, says Nyakundi has started a 15-part series ‘How Safaricom steals from Kenyans with third parties’, which portrays the telco as a “thief and a fraud, obtaining money and profits in form of airtime from its subscribers through non-existent subscriptions”.
In the second part, Nyakundi is alleged to have written an article titled ‘Your privacy and Safaricom are two different things‘, where he claimed that the company is infringing on its customers’ privacy and getting away with it.
LAID OFF
In the third part, the telco says the blogger wrote an article dubbed ‘Time to put Safaricom back in its box before it seriously hurts Kenyans‘, where he discusses the plight of Kenyans who he claims were laid off by the company after falling ill.
And in the fourth piece, Safaricom says Nyakundi wrote an article titled ‘Are Safaricom lone wolves preying on our security? What they don’t want you to know’.
“The defendant accuses the plaintiff of breaching the security of Kenyans,” says the papers.
“The defendant has failed to apologize and withdraw the defamatory statements and articles and the plaintiff suffers and continues to suffer substantial damage to its reputation,” the company adds.
TEMPORARY INJUNCTION
The court has in the meantime slapped a temporary injunction on the blogger against publishing further articles about Safaricom and ordered him to pull down the four pieces.
The company asked to be allowed to serve Nyakundi through the newspapers saying it was hard to trace him as he has no known permanent address.
The blogger has only responded to the suit with a one-line tweet: “Safaricom is suing me. Oh my God.” He attached a picture of the suit notice.
Nyakundi is one of the most popular bloggers in Kenya with a Twitter following of more than 518,000 people.
He shot into national fame when he was suspended by Meru University for exposing rot at the university, with Kenyans on Twitter calling for a lifting of the suspension.
He was eventually expelled from the university.
Editors Note: In an earlier version, we indicated that Nyakundi was suspended for exposing rot at Chuka University. We have since learnt that the blogger was at Meru University. We apologize for the embarrassment the mix up has caused Chuka University.