Legal commentator and journalist Wahome Thuku has come out with a serious allegation against Citizen TV, claiming that the Jeff Koinange Live interview featuring Health CS Aden Duale was not an independent journalistic exercise but a carefully staged and paid for appearance designed to shift public opinion on the Ebola quarantine facility.
Thuku had previously alleged that the government paid Citizen TV Ksh 1 million to host Duale on the show, a claim he says was met with doubt when he first raised it.
He stood firmly by the allegation, pointing to what he described as the suspiciously convenient nature of the entire interview as evidence that something beyond normal journalism was at play.
His suspicions were rooted in the content and tone of the interview itself. During the appearance, Jeff Koinange helped Duale present the Nanyuki facility as unremarkable, framing it as just one of 23 identical quarantine centres planned across Kenya rather than a special American-serving installation.
The messaging was smooth, coordinated and clearly aimed at neutralizing the public anger that had been building for days. Thuku found the framing too polished and too perfectly timed to be coincidental.
The argument that the Ksh 1.7 billion from the United States would go into a common basket funding all facilities equally, and that ordinary Kenyans including mama mboga and bodaboda operators in Laikipia would benefit from the same beds reserved for exposed Americans, struck him as a scripted government talking point rather than spontaneous television conversation.
For Thuku, the combination of the suspiciously accommodating interview format, the perfectly crafted counter narrative and his earlier allegation about the Ksh 1 million payment all pointed in one direction, that Kenyans were watching a production, not a press interview.