Citizen TV journalist Emmanuel Ndungu has shared a harrowing first-hand account of what he experienced while attempting to enter Asake’s concert, describing severe congestion, restricted airflow, police intervention, and moments of panic that culminated in a breach of security and injuries at the venue.
“I was there, so this is my account of what happened,” Ndungu said.
According to Ndungu, security arrangements at the event involved two major checkpoints.
“There were two stickling points for security at this event. One on the outer perimeter of the stadium complex, and then another one to get onto the field itself,” he said.
Ndungu said he arrived at the outer perimeter at about 9.15pm, where entry was organised into separate lines for men and women.
“The security had set out two lines of women and two lines of men, all funneling into this one small single-man gate in the middle,” he said.
While the men’s queue appeared manageable initially, the women’s line was significantly longer.
“For the men, there was about two lines of 40 people, so it wasn’t too bad to just join the back. But for the women, there was a few hundred, at least a couple hundred women, who were waiting to get in,” Ndungu said.
He noted the absence of physical crowd-control measures.
“There were no crowd control measures such as barriers funneling people in or zigzagging people to the front. It was all line up in the road and be behaved,” he said.
Ndungu said the situation was initially calm.
“First, it was a relatively orderly affair. No one was really trying to push in,” he said. However, entry was suddenly halted. “For some reason, the security stopped allowing people in. And it was a good 30 or 45 minutes before even one more person went through.”
During the delay, the crowd size increased rapidly. “This led many people to get frustrated. And of course, this line of 80 guys now turned into several hundreds,” he said.
Order soon collapsed. “It was no longer two orderly lines anymore because people started trying to push in, trying to make new lines. It was now just a big mob lining up at the gate at the front itself,” Ndungu said.
Police intervention heightened tensions. “When more people kept trying to overtake, the police now started getting their batons out and hitting people,” he said.
“That was the first instance where we felt a bit of a push each side and people were really just trying to run away from the police.”
As pressure mounted, some attendees warned of the danger. “The people around me were just saying, like, relax, this is how stampedes are caused,” Ndungu recalled.
Still, the physical force of the crowd intensified. “There’s only so much you can do when there’s hundreds of people now pushing against your backs,” he said.
Security later began allowing small groups through the gate. “They would open this small one-person gate, allow like 10 people through and then try and close it again,” Ndungu said.
Each opening triggered a surge. “Every time they opened it, there was a massive rush to get forward.”
As he moved closer to the gate, conditions worsened. “I’m now about six meters from the gates, but there were still dozens of people in front of me,” he said. “And this is when I started to struggle to breathe. It wasn’t good.”
He described how tightly packed bodies restricted airflow. “Everyone’s like putting their arms in front of each other, like really restricting each other’s air flows,” Ndungu said.
At that point, the crowd collectively decided to force entry. “So it was kind of like a group decision that we can’t really do anything about this. The people at the front were like, we have to just try and break through the gates and the security. So that’s really how the breach happened,” he said.
Ndungu stressed that he believed most attendees had legitimate tickets. “I truly believe that most people there had paid for their tickets,” he said. “Most people there were talking about how we’ve paid for our tickets.”
He added that breaching security likely prevented a worse outcome. “To be honest, if that didn’t happen, it could have ended much worse,” he said.
Inside the venue, another bottleneck formed. “The second sticking point now was the tunnel towards the pitch,” Ndungu said. “There’s a big gate in front and everyone starts banging on it saying, ‘Let us in, let us in.’”
The atmosphere grew increasingly hostile. “People are getting crushed left, right and center,” he said, adding that the section became “a lot more rowdy.”
Ndungu said medical attention was required.
“I believe this is the place that the paramedics had to attend to at least one person,” he said.
He described scenes of distress along the tunnel. “You would see people lined up on the side, mainly girls just crying and shoes everywhere, belongings everywhere that people had just left behind because they just wanted to get out of that situation,” he said.
Ndungu eventually made it onto the pitch but said the experience left a lasting impression. “That’s not something that I want to experience again for sure,” he said.
He concluded by urging greater awareness of crowd safety. “People need to be a little bit more aware of how stampedes start and how dangerous they can be,” Ndungu said.
As of publication, event organisers had not issued a detailed response addressing the entry-related incidents described in the journalist’s account.