The exhaust fumes on Mombasa Road do not clear in the evening; they hang in the thick heat around 6:30pm. A woman finishing an eight-hour shift on the concrete floor of an Industrial Area factory stands at the roadside, exhausted. Her feet ache, her back hurts, and before her is a massive steel footbridge.
To cross legally, she must climb three flights of steep, uneven stairs, walk through a dark, narrow cage where muggers operate, go far out of her way, then climb down three more flights. Beside her, a small opening in the wire fence offers a straight, five-second walk to the other side. She takes a deep breath and makes a run for it. Before she reaches the middle, a phone camera flashes and a firm hand grabs her arm.
She is not met by city planners asking how to make her commute safer. Instead, county enforcement officers surround her alongside a public official holding up a smartphone. Her phone is taken away. A camera is shoved in her face, and she is publicly yelled at for lacking discipline.
Then, for social media views, City Hall official Geoffrey Mosiria forces her to pick up roadside rubbish alongside elderly men and tired workers, reportedly under threat of being taken to a police cell. This degrading spectacle has become regular on Nairobi’s streets, involving both Nairobi County officers and the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA). Under the guise of enforcing road safety, working-class Nairobians are rounded up into police vans, heavily fined or publicly humiliated.
Failing pedestrian infrastructure
The story told by these officials is simple: The poor are lawless, and if ordinary Nairobians followed the rules and used footbridges, roads would be safe and traffic would flow smoothly. It is a convenient story. By turning an engineering failure into a personal moral failing, those in power avoid accountability. The narrative blames systemic problems on the supposed bad habits of poor Africans while shielding the leaders and institutions responsible for the broken system from difficult questions.
This thinking gives the state a free pass. It allows authority figures to blame failures of city design — rooted in historical neglect, class bias and poor planning — on ordinary citizens. In doing so, it excuses the everyday violence and harassment inflicted on working-class people simply trying to get home after a hard day’s work.
The truth is that Nairobi’s pedestrian infrastructure is not failing because people are reckless or stupid. It is failing because it was designed without human beings at its centre. Nairobi remains stuck with an old colonial planning model that prioritises cars, while the majority who walk everywhere are treated as an inconvenience. Modern highway projects have only deepened this inequality. Millions of dollars are spent on major expressways designed to move cars quickly, cutting directly through poor neighbourhoods.
When planners remember people on foot, their default solution is almost always a footbridge. But footbridges are not necessarily a thoughtful gift to citizens; in many cases, they are evidence of flawed planning. A footbridge exists so heavy vehicles do not have to slow down, while pedestrians are forced to expend maximum physical effort simply to cross a street in their own city.
Evidence of a broken system
For a pregnant woman, an elderly worker, a person carrying heavy loads or someone using a wheelchair, these tall steel structures are not helpful infrastructure; they are physical barriers. They can be dangerous, exhausting and inconvenient. When pedestrians choose to cross at ground level, they may be making a rational decision in an environment that works against them.
Meeting that choice with handcuffs, fines and public shaming is not good governance; it is state bullying. We have seen this same script play out in Nairobi for years. When the city fails to provide proper bus stops, county officers attack matatu crews for picking up passengers at the kerb. When the city fails to provide adequate markets, officers crack down on street hawkers. And when the state builds hostile highways through communities, it sends the NTSA and camera crews to arrest people trying to cross.
Every time an official stands over a tired worker with a phone camera, asking why they did not climb a three-storey steel ladder, they are putting on a public spectacle. They divert attention from billions spent on inadequate road engineering and shift the blame to the poor.
Nairobi’s pedestrians do not need lectures on discipline from officials riding in air-conditioned cars. They need streets built for people: simple zebra crossings at ground level, functioning traffic lights, wide pavements and basic respect. Until city planners start designing for people rather than cars, arresting someone at a footbridge is not a victory for law and order. It is simply evidence of a broken system trying to conceal its mistakes.
