HAPPENING NOW: Kakamega Businesses Shut Down as Youths March With Body of Student Killed During anti-fuel Protests

Businesses in Kakamega town remained closed on Friday morning as angry youths took to the streets carrying the body of a Sigalagala National Polytechnic student who was killed during anti-fuel price protests.

The procession was as powerful as it was painful. Young people marching through town with the body of one of their own, a student whose life ended in the middle of a demonstration against fuel prices that have squeezed ordinary Kenyans to their limit.

The body had been moved from Kakamega County Mortuary at around 2:00am under heavy security, in what appeared to be an attempt to keep it away from the public eye. It did not work. 

Students traced it to his rural home, retrieved it and brought it back to town, turning the streets of Kakamega into both a protest and a procession.

The imagery was impossible to ignore. Shuttered businesses, young people in the streets and a body being carried through town as a statement that words alone could no longer make. The message was clear: this death will not be quietly buried.

The student's killing has added a deeply human cost to what began as demonstrations against fuel price increases. 

EPRA recently raised diesel by Ksh 46.29 per litre and petrol by Ksh 16.65 per litre, a move that triggered protests across the country.

Authorities are yet to make a formal statement on the circumstances surrounding the student's death or the morning's events in Kakamega town.