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High Court Rules on Petition Accusing Faras of Editing Driver’s Remarks Into Company Endorsement
A constitutional battle accusing ride-hailing firm Faras of deceptively editing and circulating videos of a prominent drivers’ representative has encountered an unexpected legal roadblock after the High Court ruled that the dispute should be addressed by Kenya’s Data Protection Commissioner.
In a ruling delivered on July 23, Justice Patricia Nyaundi struck out a petition filed by Daniel Onwonga Manga, holding that the case was prematurely brought before the High Court because Parliament had already established a specialised mechanism for resolving disputes involving personal data.
The decision leaves unresolved Manga’s explosive allegations that Faras Cabs Kenya Ltd secretly recorded him, manipulated his remarks, and transformed criticism into what appeared to be a glowing endorsement of the company’s platform.
Meeting that Sparked Court Battle
According to court documents, the dispute traces its origins to a stakeholders’ town hall meeting held on March 13, 2025.
Manga claimed he criticised aspects of the Faras platform during the meeting.
Instead of publishing his remarks faithfully, he alleged, the company selectively edited and spliced the footage before distributing it across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and X.
He argued that the altered clips falsely portrayed him as praising the very company he had criticised.
The consequences, he told the court, extended well beyond social media.
Professional WhatsApp groups allegedly branded him a “traitor” and a “sleeper agent”, eroding his credibility among drivers whom he represented.
The edited videos, he argued, commercially exploited his image and voice without permission while damaging both his reputation and economic interests.
The Digital Trail He Wanted Preserved
Rather than immediately seeking damages, Manga first sought an unusually detailed preservation order.
He asked the court to compel Faras to preserve and surrender backend analytics for every disputed post.
Those records included impressions, reach, audience demographics, engagement statistics, timestamps, click-through rates, and edit histories.
He further sought permission to serve global technology companies, including Meta, X Corp, ByteDance, and Google, outside Kenya.
If Faras failed to produce the records, those companies would instead be compelled to release certified platform analytics.
His reasoning was straightforward.
Only those metrics, he argued, could reveal how widely the videos travelled, who watched them, whether Kenyan audiences received them, and the true scale of the reputational harm allegedly inflicted.
Faras Chose Jurisdiction Over Defence
Faras did not immediately challenge the factual allegations.
Instead, the company raised a preliminary objection attacking the court’s jurisdiction altogether.
Its lawyers argued that the complaint fundamentally concerned the collection, processing, and publication of personal data.
Parliament, they said, had already entrusted such disputes to the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) under the Data Protection Act, 2019.
Because Manga had bypassed that statutory process, Faras maintained that the constitutional petition could not proceed.
The company further argued that the dispute was essentially a private civil complaint disguised as a constitutional petition.
Court Draws a Clear Legal Line
Justice Nyaundi agreed that jurisdiction had to be determined before any factual questions.
Quoting the long-established principle from Speaker of the National Assembly v Karume, the judge reiterated that where Parliament creates a clear statutory dispute-resolution mechanism, litigants must ordinarily exhaust that process before turning to constitutional courts.
The court carefully examined the substance rather than the language of the petition.
Although Manga cited numerous constitutional rights, the judge concluded that the dispute centred upon one factual complaint.
Faras allegedly recorded, edited, and published his personal data without consent.
Those allegations, the court held, fall squarely within the Data Protection Act rather than the Constitution’s original jurisdiction.
“The Court’s first duty is to identify what the case is, not what a party wishes it to be,” the ruling observed, adding that merely citing several constitutional provisions cannot convert an ordinary statutory dispute into a constitutional one.
Petition Ends Before Merits are Heard
Having reached that conclusion, the court declined to consider whether Faras actually manipulated the videos or violated Manga’s rights.
Instead, Justice Nyaundi struck out the entire petition as premature.
The accompanying application seeking preservation orders equally collapsed.
Each party was ordered to bear its own legal costs.
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