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The fallout between President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto has caused divisions in the country that could result in violence, a lobby group has warned.

International Alert Peace Actors Forum says the tense political environment, campaign chaos, hate speech and general sense of political chaos did not bode well for the country.

“There are growing fears that Kenya will once again plunge into chaos and violence in the run-up to and after the 2022 elections unless Kenyans, both ordinary citizens and the political elite, come together to change the political situation,” the organisation says in a report dubbed The Path Towards August 2022 Elections in Kenya.

The report points out that in ODM leader Raila Odinga’s stronghold of Nyanza and Ruto’s North Rift home turf, sections of the population were not willing to settle for any other outcome other than a win in the election by their leader.

While launching the report, Peace Actors Forum (PAF) representative Chris Wakube, International Alert Country Director Rabindra Gurung and International Alert Director of Programmes Kathryn Tomlinson observed that Kenya’s elections have always been a flashpoint for conflict.

Potential hotspots

They further added that the country’s history is replete with recurring episodes of election-related violence in which thousands of people have died and hundreds of thousands more have been internally displaced.

The Peace Actors Forum, with support from International Alert, hosted six regional dialogue forums in different regions of Kenya.

The dialogues were conducted in the North Rift/Western Kenya, Coast, Nairobi, Nyanza, Central and the North-Eastern regions, covering 30 counties, which had been identified as potential hotspots.

In their regional dialogues across the country, the group noted that young people, particularly the unemployed, were increasingly self-organising either as illegitimate gangs and militia groups or as boda boda riders and other self-help groups in readiness to lend both legitimate and violent support to politicians.