Makau Mutua: Opposition treats protest victims’ grief as political football
By Joel Masibo, August 28, 2025Professor Makau Mutua has accused the opposition of hypocrisy after trying to halt the compensation process of anti-government protest victims.
Taking to his X account on Thursday, August 28, 2025, the newly appointed chair of the government’s Panel of Experts on compensation for victims of demonstrations and public protests has called out leaders playing politics in the particular process.
“I see the ‘United Opposition’ is filing suits right and left, trying to stop the Panel of Experts from compensating victims of protests and riots. How heartless. Shame on them! This same ‘Opposition’ has been calling for compensation nonstop. What has changed now that the government is actually doing it? What do they have for the victims except bilious, toxic, hypocritical, and empty rhetoric? The grief of the victims, their families, and loved ones isn’t a political football,” Prof. Mutua said, responding to what he described as an effort to frustrate the panel’s work.
What the panel is and what it must do
The panel was formally gazetted in a notice signed by the Head of Public Service, Felix Koskei, on August 25, 2025, giving it a 120-day mandate to develop an operational framework to identify, verify and facilitate compensation for civilians and members of the security services who suffered bodily harm or lost their lives during protests and riots dating back to 2017. The gazette set out the technical and administrative arrangements under which the panel will operate.
President William Ruto designated Prof. Makau Mutua, his constitutional adviser on human rights affairs, as chairperson.
The panel includes senior legal and human-rights figures, with Law Society of Kenya president Faith Odhiambo named vice-chair.
Other notable names reported on the list include former Solicitor-General Kennedy Ogeto and Amnesty International’s Irungu Houghton, among several attorneys, academics and civil-society figures tapped to steer the exercise.
Almost immediately after the appointments were gazetted, a lawyer filed a petition in the High Court seeking to block the framework and its implementation, a move the petition’s author says is aimed at scrutinising the legal basis and procedure for the payouts.
The challenge, which arrived at a time when the panel’s clock had already started ticking, has been seized on by a section of politicians as justification to question the whole process.
Following his appointment as the coordinator of the task by the president on Friday, August 8, 2025, Mutua has promised that the panel composition will include women, youths, and members of religious societies.