TikToker Kakan Maiyo to seek compensation from State after incitement case thrown out

A Nairobi court has quashed charges against popular Kenyan TikTok content creator and businessman Kakan Maiyo.

Maiyo was arrested on July 10, 2025, accused of inciting violence against police officers through his content.

He spent two nights in police custody and was released on Ksh.10,000 cash bail. In her ruling, Principal Magistrate Rose Ndombi stated that the offences, as framed in the charge sheet, are no longer recognized under the law.

Through his lawyers, Maiyo has announced he will move to the High Court seeking damages and compensation.

Maiyo was known for his social media content where he called out failures of the government, police brutality, as well as marketing his logistics company.

In one of his most-viewed videos, he was seen warning security officers behind the enforced disappearances of government critics that “a time is coming when you will go to abduct someone and you will not return to your stations alive. Mark my words.”

“The wrath of God is upon this government. When it strikes, none of you who have been involved in the abductions of Kenyans will survive. Your families will cry the same tears these families have cried,” he said in the contentious video.

“No amount of arrest, abduction, or killing will silence Kenyans. It is a waste of time.”

Soon afterwards, in July last year, a video circulated showing three apparent plainclothes officers forcefully pinning Maiyo to a wall in a corridor indoors before leading him away.

The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), in a later statement, said detectives had trailed Maiyo to Kimathi House in Nairobi, where his logistics company’s office was located.

He was accused of incitement for allegedly making inflammatory remarks and alarming publication targeting police officers and their families through his TikTok content.

Maiyo was then released on a cash bail of Ksh.10,000 on July 11, 2025 after spending two nights in custody at Muthaiga Police Station.

Speaking after his release, he said he was interrogated over several of his online videos and that his mobile phone was confiscated during the process.

His legal team, addressing the press then, dismissed the charges as baseless arguing that the accusations did not meet the legal threshold for prosecution.