President William Ruto has sent a personal apology, plus one on behalf of the Kenyan state, to the family of Rex Kanyike Masai, a young protester shot dead during the anti-Finance Bill demonstrations in Nairobi in June 2024.
A delegation from the state compensation panel delivered both messages on Thursday, October 29, 2026, visiting the protester’s mother at her Kayole home in Nairobi. It was led by the panel’s chairperson, Professor Makau Mutua, and joined by IPOA, the policing oversight body, and by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.
Announcing the visit on X, the panel said Mutua and his members “paid a visit to Mama Rex Masai in Kayole today”, “delivering the President’s personal apology as well as the State’s to the family for their loss”. It called the engagement a reaffirmation of “justice, healing, national reconciliation and the ongoing compensation process”.
Rex Masai was killed on June 20, 2024, as young Kenyans demonstrated against the Finance Bill 2024 and the tax measures it proposed. His death turned into one of the defining cases of the Gen Z-led protest movement, feeding demands for police accountability for demonstrators killed or hurt.
The policing watchdog IPOA opened a file on what it termed an “alleged fatal police shooting”, gathering witness statements, video and forensic and ballistic evidence. The circumstances then went to an inquest, which wrapped up in September 2026 after 30 prosecution witnesses and 48 exhibits. Parties are filing written submissions before a magistrate rules on how Masai died.
The apology lands inside a contested compensation drive. Ruto set up the framework in August 2025 with Mutua as coordinator, meant to cover civilians and security personnel killed or injured in demonstrations and riots. The panel now says more than 1,000 victims have been paid about Ksh1.2 billion of the Ksh2 billion set aside, while stressing that money alone cannot repair every part of the harm.
That programme has had a rough legal ride. Rights lawyers attacked the original presidential panel as an executive overreach, and in December 2025 the High Court sitting in Kerugoya declared it unconstitutional, holding that reparations oversight belongs to the KNCHR under Article 59 of the Constitution. Documented counts from the unrest list roughly 60 deaths and more than 600 injuries, and claims under the current framework had to be filed by April 3, 2026.
Victims’ families and rights advocates keep insisting that “financial compensation must not replace investigations, accountability or access to justice”. For Masai’s mother, Thursday’s apology ended a wait of more than two years for the state to say sorry. Whether it speeds the magistrate’s verdict on her son’s death is another matter.
Sources
- Ruto finally delivers personal apology to Rex Maasai’s family over protest death – People Daily
- Kenya’s Protest Victims Compensation Drive Faces Political Skepticism
