Cover photo: Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna. Photo via Edwin Sifuna's Facebook page, as published by People Daily Digital. Campus Pulse does not own this image; it is used here with attribution to its original publisher and source page.

Some graduation moments are about the graduands. This one, briefly, was about a guest.

At the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) on Friday, 23 October 2026, crowds erupted into cheers, ululations and chants of "Sifuna!" when Vice-Chancellor Very Rev. Prof. Elias Omondi Opongo, SJ, introduced Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna during the institution's 45th graduation ceremony at its main campus in Lang'ata, Nairobi.

People Daily reported the moment directly:

"We also have with us Senator Edwin Sifuna," Opongo said, prompting an immediate outburst of cheers that interrupted his speech. "Sifuna is the senator of Nairobi County," the vice-chancellor added as the crowd cheered again.

Sifuna then stood up and waved to the audience, according to TUKO's report of the same ceremony.

Why the cheers mattered beyond the noise

The ceremony itself was about thousands of graduands, their families, university officials and invited guests. Among the dignitaries present were Prof. Kivutha Kibwana, Chancellor of the African Leadership University, and nominated Senator Hamida Kibwana, who was graduating with a Master of Arts degree in Project Planning and Management, according to reporting of the event.

But the reception for Sifuna landed in a very specific political moment. Sifuna has increasingly featured in discussions over who should lead the opposition against President William Ruto, and his political movement, Linda Mwananchi, has endorsed him as its preferred candidate, while negotiations among opposition leaders over a common presidential ticket continue ahead of the 2027 General Election.

People Daily was careful about what the cheers do and do not mean, and Campus Pulse repeats that caution: the reaction at CUEA was not a political endorsement by the university, and it is not a formal indication of how Kenyans will vote in 2027. It was, however, a very public measure of visibility — and for a politician building a youth-facing profile, visibility at a graduation, in front of graduands and their families, is exactly the kind of moment that travels.

Then came the second clip

A separate short clip from the graduation, shared on TikTok and reported by TUKO, showed a female graduate holding on to Sifuna in a crowd, with on-screen captions reporting an exchange in Sheng. TUKO reported the graduate saying "Simwachilii" — "I won't let go" — and Sifuna responding "Security watakudandia" — security will jump on you — before his security detail stepped in.

Campus Pulse is reporting that clip as TUKO reported it, not as independently verified footage: we have not verified the clip's full audio, its exact context, or the identity of the graduate, and we are not naming her. What is verifiable is that the clip spread widely, divided opinion online, and became a second, messier viral moment attached to the same graduation — the kind of clip that says as much about how Kenyan timelines work as it does about the ceremony itself.

Some online commenters, as quoted by TUKO, criticised the graduate for getting "too comfortable"; others treated the moment as light-hearted graduation-day excitement. Campus Pulse is not amplifying abuse aimed at any individual student, and no unverified identity is published here.

What this tells you about campus politics right now

University events are no longer just university events. A graduation, a campus forum, a student election — each one is now also a stage, a clip, and a timeline debate. Sifuna's CUEA reception, set against a postponed university forum elsewhere earlier in the season, shows how quickly the same politician can be cheered in one campus setting and contested in another.

For CUEA's graduands, the day still belonged to them. For everyone else watching the timeline, the day became a preview of 2027: young audiences, loud rooms, and politicians who know exactly how a ten-second cheer travels further than a ten-minute speech.

What we could not verify

The identity of the graduate in the TikTok clip, the full unedited audio of that exchange, and any official CUEA statement about either the cheers or the clip were not verified in the sources used for this draft. The cheers themselves are verified through People Daily and TUKO's reporting of the ceremony; the TikTok exchange is reported here only as TUKO reported it.

Sources