Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja has opened up on what encouraged him to join social media platform TikTok, a choice he says has helped him to easily interact with the younger generation.
Giving credit to a friend’s daughter, Governor Sakaja said that she told him to join TikTok since he shares “serious matters” on all his other social media platforms while TikTok would allow him to easily interact with the newer generation who are mostly on the app.
“I have a friend whose daughter told me that we discuss serious matters on Twitter and Facebook because there are a lot of agendas and economic figures but there is a new generation that is on TikTok and does not want serious things,” said Sakaja speaking on Radio Maisha.
Heeding the young girl’s advice, Sakaja said that he joined TikTok on Saturday and much to his surprise, he garnered 200,000 followers within 24 hours and the numbers have since kept on growing.
“So I joined last Saturday and in one day I had 200K followers, it is as if they were just waiting for me to join, and right now they are at 300K,” he said.
He also delved into his now-trending video of him inviting well-known tiktoker Priscilla wa Imani to City Hall, saying that she caught his attention and was forced to tag along with the whistling trend the lady uses in her videos.
“Yesterday I saw this lady calling herself Priscilla wa Imani who whistles everywhere she goes and calls people. So I went on TikTok and invited her to City Hall and it was in the evening so maybe today she will be there,” said Sakaja.
Governor Sakaja said there is a need to bridge the gap between leaders and citizens which he says has made free interaction between the two parties nearly impossible.
“At times it’s not good to have all work and no play. At times even us leaders need to show others that we are normal human beings, we are not kings we are just normal citizens given responsibilities to lead others,” he said.
“Most times leaders put a huge barrier between them and citizens and it’s not supposed to be that way because they forget that they are the ones who elected us and even after our leadership stint we will go back to being one of them.”
As of the time of this publication, Governor Sakaja has garnered 325K followers on TikTok with 1.2M likes.