Kenya Insights

Tag: El Chapo

  • Ruto Earns New Nickname ‘El-Chapo’ After Sh1M Chapati Promise

    Ruto Earns New Nickname ‘El-Chapo’ After Sh1M Chapati Promise

    President William Ruto’s promise to buy a chapati-making machine for students in Nairobi and the city’s subsidised school meals initiative has triggered widespread ridicule and criticism online with critics terming it a nonpriority.

    Ruto made the pledge at St. Teresa Girls Secondary School in Mathare after during his development tour of Nairobi after Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja requested assistance in purchasing the machine.

    The machine would be used to make chapati, which the county plans to introduce in its Dishi na Countyschool feeding program.

    “Over 300,000 children benefit from the program, meaning we need a machine that can produce a million chapatis daily. I have asked the President for it,” Sakaja said.

    In response, Ruto agreed, telling the excited students, “I have agreed to buy a chapati-making machine. Governor, your job now is to find where to buy it.”

    However, many Kenyans dismissed the pledge as an unnecessary initiative that fails to address pressing national issues.

    Critics accused Ruto of having misplaced priorities and exaggerating minor projects as major achievements.

    Social media users mocked the announcement, comparing Kenya’s leadership priorities with global advancements.

    Others expressed frustration over the government’s focus, with some Kenyans even dubbing Ruto “El Chapo,” a play on both the street name for chapati and the infamous Mexican drug lord.

    Some questioned the viability of the project, raising logistical concerns about how a machine could produce such large quantities of chapati efficiently.

    The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) spiraled the conversation into a meme contest, with social media users competing to outdo one another by creating memes about the chapati issue.

    ‘El Chapo’

    Videos and images illustrating exaggerated versions of how a million chapatis would be made flooded Kenyan social media with some users faulting Sakaja for failing to prioritize solutions to the city’s flooding crisis given the onset of rains.

    “It’s rainy season, and instead of working on the drainage system, they are talking about chapati. Black people with black hearts,” wrote @_James041.

    Another user, Franko Tover, said, “Kenyans, with their peanut-sized brains, love excitement and drama, and politicians use this to divert people’s focus. What big thing is happening? What is getting stolen while we vibe about chapatis?”

    User @TongileiM added, “I’m showing my mum all those chapati memes and [yooh] she’s so in with us cooking that El Chapo.”

    Despite growing criticism from the public and religious leaders urging him to focus on implementation rather than making promises, President Ruto continues to make grand pledges—many of which remain unfulfilled long after their announcements.

  • ‪Sinaloa Cartel: US Arrests Mexican Drug Lord ‘El Mayo’ Along With El Chapo’s Son In Texas‬

    ‪Sinaloa Cartel: US Arrests Mexican Drug Lord ‘El Mayo’ Along With El Chapo’s Son In Texas‬

    One of the world’s most powerful drug lords, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, has been arrested by US federal agents in El Paso, Texas.

    Zambada, 76, founded the criminal organisation with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is currently jailed in the US.

    Arrested with Zambada on Thursday was Guzman’s son, Joaquin Guzman Lopez, said the US justice department.

    In February, Zambada was charged by US prosecutors with a conspiracy to make and distribute fentanyl, a drug more powerful than heroin that has been blamed for the US opioid crisis.

    Details of the arrests of the two men remain unclear, but it appears they flew into the United States.

    Citing Mexican and US officials, the Wall Street Journal reports that Zambada was tricked into boarding the plane by a high-ranking Sinaloa member following a months-long operation by Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI.

    The paper added that Zambada believed he was going to inspect clandestine airfields in Mexico.

    Officials said Zambada was “lured” onto a private plane under “false pretences” by Guzman Lopez, the New York Times reports.

    Zambada believed the plane would fly south in Mexico but instead it flew north and landed in El Paso, said Fox News Correspondent Bryan Llenas citing law enforcement sources.

    Guzman Lopez surrendered to US authorities and turned on Zambada because he “blamed Mayo for the capture of his father”, Mr Llenas added.

    In a written statement on Thursday evening, US Attorney General Merrick Garland said the two men lead “one of the most violent and powerful drug trafficking organisations in the world”.

    “Fentanyl is the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, and the Justice Department will not rest until every single cartel leader, member and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable,” he added.

    American prosecutors say the Sinaloa cartel is the biggest supplier of drugs to the US.

    US authorities have previously noted that fentanyl is the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45.

    The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had been offering a reward of up to $15m (£12m) for Zambada’s capture.

    During Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s trial in 2019, his lawyers accused Zambada of bribing the “entire” Mexican government in exchange for living openly without fear of prosecution.

    “In truth [Guzman] controlled nothing,” Guzman’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, told jurors. “Mayo Zambada did,” he claimed.

    According to the US state department, Zambada is also the owner of several legitimate businesses in Mexico, including “a large milk company, a bus line and a hotel”, as well as real estate assets.

    Alongside fentanyl charges, he is also facing charges in the US ranging from drug trafficking, murder, kidnapping, money laundering and organised crime.

    Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada

    In May, Zambada’s nephew – Eliseo Imperial Castro, who was known as “Cheyo Antrax” – was killed in an ambush in Mexico. He was also wanted by US authorities.

    Zambada is arguably the biggest drug lord in the world and certainly the most influential in the Americas.

    He had evaded authorities for decades, and as such, his arrest has come as a shock in Mexico.

    In a statement, US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said the Sinaloa cartel “pioneered the manufacture of fentanyl and has for years trafficked it into our country, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans and devastating countless communities”.

    FBI director Chris Wray said the arrests are “an example of the FBI’s and our partners’ commitment to dismantling violent transnational criminal organisations like the Sinaloa Cartel,” he said.

    As more information emerges, Zambada’s arrest will no doubt be heralded by President Joe Biden’s administration as one of the most significant operations by the DEA in years.

    Zambada co-founded the Sinaloa cartel in the wake of the collapse of the Guadalajara cartel at the end of the 1980s.

    While Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was the public face of the organisation and the most notorious of the two men, many believed it was in fact El Mayo who was its real leader.

    Not only ruthless, he was also innovative, creating and maintaining some of the earliest links with Colombian cartels to flood the US with cocaine and heroin.

    And more latterly, fentanyl.

    His leadership of the criminal empire has endured in the face of changing presidents in Mexico and the US, amid repeated anti-drug offensives from successive governments and constant efforts by his enemies in other drug-trafficking organisations to bring him down.

    That is no mean feat in the violent, dangerous and treacherous underworld in which he has operated as an unassailable kingpin for many years.

    Yet that extraordinary resilience appears to have run out in El Paso, Texas – a city blighted by the influx of the synthetic opioid, fentanyl, much of which was smuggled in by his organisation.

  • Narcotics Trafficking Kingping Joaquín Archivaldo ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán Loera Has Been Sentenced To Life In Prison

    Narcotics Trafficking Kingping Joaquín Archivaldo ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán Loera Has Been Sentenced To Life In Prison

    World most notorious drug lord Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera has been sentenced to life.

    The famed drug lord known as “El Chapo,” whose dramatic prison escapes fed his legend as an untouchable kingpin running the world’s largest narcotics trafficking group, was today, Wednesday, sentenced to life in prison.

    Before the sentence was imposed, Guzman, 61, angrily denounced his treatment, calling the trial unfair.

    “When extradited, I expected to have a fair trial where justice was blind and my fame would not be a factor, but what happened was actually the opposite,” El Chapo said in Court before sentence was imposed.

    “The government of the United States will send me to a prison where my name will never be heard again. I will take this opportunity to say there was no justice here.”

    U.S. District Court Judge Brian Cohan, said the law gave El Chapo no discretion in his life imprisonment.

    Guzmán was convicted in February after a three-month trial which detailed his murderous rise to power in Mexico, where his Sinaloa Cartel moved billions of dollars worth of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana from Mexico to the United States.

    Witnesses at the trial also described multimillion dollar bribes paid to senior Mexican officials to keep the cartels running.

    Prosecutors introduced extensive evidence — including 1 million intercepted messages between alleged cartel members and testimony from 14 cooperating witnesses — detailing ghastly killings in addition to the smuggling.

    The proceedings offered vivid insight into the cartel’s brutal force and intimidation, its reach and the profits it reaped.

    Over 25 years, Guzmán earned the organization more than $14 billion while exhibiting an extraordinary ability to evade law enforcement.

    After the conviction, Richard P. Donoghue, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, pronounced that Guzmán’s bloody reign had come to an end.

    “And the myth that he could not be brought to justice has been laid to rest,” Donoghue said at the time.

    Defense attorneys argued that Guzmán was a scapegoat, railroaded by witnesses who were gutter human beings lying to save themselves.

    After six days of deliberations, the jury found him guilty on all 10 counts on the indictment.

    Renowned for escaping two maximum-security prisons in Mexico — first in 2001, with the assistance of prison guards, and again in 2015 through a tunnel beneath the shower in his jail cell — Guzmán was recaptured in 2016 after a meeting with actor Sean Penn tipped authorities to his whereabouts near Mexico’s northwestern coast. He has lived in solitary confinement since his extradition from Mexico the following year.

    Last month, the judge denied Guzmán’s application for more comfortable prison conditions, citing prosecutors’ suggestions that the request could be part of a ploy to escape from prison for a third time.

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