Radio Africa Group, one of the companies that has the widest audience reach, has multiple channels including KISS FM and Classic 105.2FM.
Over a period of the last ten years, two strongmen emerged as controllers and dictators of public-opinion. They are Maina Kageni and Caroline Mutoko.
Caroline Mutoko who joined the radio station earlier was all about women empowerment. Being a feminist, her mantra largely revolved around “what a man can do, a woman can do better,” and she dispatched this message to precision. She was all about standards and women not entertaining mediocrity. She had little regards of companionship or marriage and trivialized men from a financial perspective.
Many misguided women fall by the wayside of her preaching. And with that came the sharp rise of single-mothers at the dawn of the new millenium, a scenario that continues to pan out to date.
Caroline Mutoko even campaigned for Vera Sidika’s nomination into the Big Brother Africa project, an even more absurd endorsement from the so-called radio queen, helping elevate the hitherto unknown socialite on the mainstream media, thus opening another career line for women that may want to sell their bodies to old politicians that Caroline Mutoko was pimping them to.
Then came Maina Kageni. Embraced by sponsors and the public alike, he teamed up with Churchill who masqueraded as a born-again Christian to launch the most toxic show in Kenyan radio history. Mornings when children were heading to school were a nightmare. The topics on discussion immoral and satanic.
Maina also has little regard for the marriage institution and thus endeavoured to compromise the image and respect of a Kenyan man, which was reduced to a cash-dispenser. Women in Kenya were programmed to only respond to financial incentives, not principles, morals or decency.
It is during the Maina Kageni-era that the word “clande” took hold, where young women would have multiple illicit sexual relations with older men for financial gain. Coinciding with the moral degradation was the advent of the booming mobile money transfer industry. No wonder every woman you meet today is always soliciting for MPESA. Kenyan woman have been programmed to be lazy and serial-borrowers of money by Maina Kageni, the self-confessed Women’s Representative of Nairobi.
What has been the net-effect of the conflicting messaging from both Caroline Mutoko and Maina Kageni? Moral malaise. Kenya is headed to the dogs. The intellectual content of their shows were so shallow that unlike Oprah Winfrey who at the height of her career started a book club helping Americans develop a reading culture, these two utilized their prime-time to perpetuate modern day prostitution. Other than a few fundraisers where they pretend to raise a few million shillings as a way to give back to society, their shows have wrecked an entire generation of Kenyans with toxic discourse.
Caroline has recently retired from radio and now increased her social media prominence taking her gospel on Twitter and a YouTube page. It’s a pity that people still take her seriously after a decade of misleading women that they can be independent and can adopt kids, watering down marriage and family life. Like Julie Gichuru, Mutoko espouses perfection, preaching a lie about her life, yet she cannot dare tell the truth of all the morals she has had to concede.
As the Communication Authority of Kenya (CAK) cracks down on radio programs that are purveyors of immorality like Maina and Kingangi’s show, the curtain is just about to fall on his career. He was recently accused of being involved in land scams whereby he partnered with many land selling groups and property developers in exchange for his endorsement.
Recent cancellations of title-deeds in Lamu deemed to have been grabbed by the Ministry of Lands included a development that was linked to Maina Kageni. Owners of property in Thika Greens are lamenting the lack of title-deeds almost 8 years after purchase, a development that was marketed by Maina Kageni.
That over and above the retrogressive contributions on radio, Maina Kageni is part of land fraud schemes is proof that gullible Kenyans were taken for a ride. They have always been taken for a ride anyways !
In their retirement, we will not tire or relent. We will always remind these two figures of the negative role they played in society, damage that may take decades to undo. That the cost of their toxic shows as regards to broken families, marriages is way more than any money they may contribute for their CSR programmes. That at the peak of their careers, Caroline Mutoko and Maina Kageni consciously chose to mislead their listeners instead of establishing a new order in Kenya that glorifies hard work, innovation and excellence.
One day in this lifetime, Caroline Mutoko and Maina Kageni shall be held to account.