The word Tugege has been used by Kenyans to describe a crowd of political supporters from My Kenya region.
The word was first used by former governor of Nakuru Hon. Lee Kinanjui at a burrial in Nakuru.
According to Kenyalist.net, the word Tugege means a, “brainless stooges, especially those who are simple minded and easily impressed with trinkets.”
Adversarial political description of unwilling tribal (Kikuyu) proletariat. In Swahili,a “Dimwits Watu Wa Kubebewa akili.”
In September 2023, the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) shot down claims that it was planning to outlaw the use of the term “Tugege.”
In a statement, the NCIC wrote: “We wish to correct the information being peddled through social media to the effect that the NCIC is planning to ban the term “Tugege”,”
The commission noted that it “disassociates itself from these allegations. Kindly ignore them.”
The NCIC was a refuting statement from a controversial blogger Cyprian Nyakundi’s who had claimed that the commission was considering a ban on the word and would seek arrests and prosecutions against those found guilty.
In the run-up to the 2022 general election, the NCIC drew criticism from a section of Kenyans for releasing a list of words it sought to outlaw due to ‘hate speech’.
NCIC chair Samuel Kobia detailed that the words included in the lexicon had the potential to incite violence between two or more ethnic communities in Kenya.
Some of the words that had been flagged included, among others: Hatupangwingwi, kwekwe, Watu wa kurusha mawe, kill and mende.
