Nairobi News

Sports

Gor Mahia rocked by dirty cyber war as club’s social media pages ‘disappear’


A disagreement over how to manage Gor Mahia’s ‘official’ social media pages, following Winnie Odinga’s entry into the club’s affairs, has resulted in the team’s loss of an estimated half a million followers on Facebook and Twitter, Nairobi News has established.

Up until this past week, the 17-time Kenyan champions were among the most popular African sides on social media with 332,000 followers on the club’s Gor Mahia FC Facebook page and 134,000 followers on @Gor Mahia Official FC Twitter handle.

These accounts were not only linked with the club’s official website gormahiafc.co.ke but also consistently updated the followers on the current affairs surrounding the first and youth teams.

But the aforementioned Facebook and Twitter accounts are now inaccessible amid suggestions they have either been deactivated or sold off, leading to confusion among the club’s supporters.

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIST

However, the club chairman Ambrose Rachier has stated that he is unaware of the foregoing cyber war at the club.

“I am not a consistent social media user so I do not know what happened. The club’s management uses WhatsApp and telephone calls to communicate, or the website when we plan to pass messages over to the public. I do not know much about Facebook and Twitter,” Rachier said.

But Nairobi News understands that Ms Odinga recent appointment as the ‘communication strategist and consultant’ for the club led to the current confusion.

Ms Odinga is the daughter of opposition leader Raila Odinga.

ACCOUNTS DEACTIVATED

“She (Winnie) wanted full control of the social media accounts even though we wished for dialogue on the way forward,” said Tony Anelka, an ardent club fan.

Anelka, alongside three colleagues, have managed the club’s social media account for the past eight years.

“In the end, I had to relinquish my position as an administrator for these social media accounts in February but was surprised to learn last week that the accounts have been deactivated. It’s unfortunate considering the time and effort we put up to build the club’s image on social media,” he further said.

And in a strange twist of events, it’s been reported that the club’s initial Facebook account has been transformed into another page under the account name ‘One Love Kenya’ amid suggestions that this transfer was commercially driven. Ms Winnie Odinga was unreachable for comment.