That Time We Had a Fake CEO & Why

Many lies have been told about Radio 254, but this piece aims to share the truth about the biggest lie ever told about Radio 254.

The founder of Radio 254 first had the idea of owning a radio station in 2011. He recalls even telling Shania in 2016 about registering a radio station and wanting her to be a presenter. It was not until 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic happened, that the founder decided to stop just talking and thinking about it and finally act on a thought that had been lingering in his mind for over ten years. At the time, it felt like the world was ending anyway, so there was really nothing to lose.

It was easy for our founder to set up a radio station that plays 100% Kenyan music because for ten years between 2010 and 2020, he had been listening to and collecting Kenyan music everyday.

It did not even feel like a job; it felt like the natural thing to do. So, when the light bulb moment happened, all our founder had to do was take the music from his 4 1TB hard drives and put them into the station’s playlist, and like they say, the rest is history. On 1 October 2020, Radio 254 went live, playing music from the founder’s hard drives, which became the station’s first playlisted songs.

So where do the lies begin? At the time that Radio 254 was founded, the station was first registered as a nonprofit organization and trademark registered in Washington, D.C, in April of 2020, seven months before the station went live officially on 1 October 2020, as previously mentioned. Between October and December of 2020, no live show had ever aired on Radio as the station only played the founders collection of Kenyan music and a curated set of podcasts that we had non-exclusive licensing agreements with, such as The Ado Veli Podcast and The Surviving Nairobi Podcast.

In December of 2020, the founder of Radio 254 visited Kenya for the holidays and began telling family and friends about his new radio station that he was excited about. The concept of an online radio station was still new to most people, with many asking what the station’s frequency was, not realizing that the station was online. As the trip continued, in January of 2021, the founder of Radio 254 found himself asking, how are other online radio stations able to talk? Remember, at the time, no live show had ever aired on Radio 254. So, after a long rabbit hole on the internet, he finally figured it out, and nothing was the same. This moment of realizing you could talk online, and people could hear you completely changed everything for Radio 254.

It is also here that the liar enters the picture. On the day that Radio 254 went live for the first time, the founder of Radio 254 was at an Airbnb in Ridgeways with his girlfriend and decided to invite his brother and a friend to join them to try to do a live radio show together. The friend who showed up, unfortunately, had contracted COVID-19 and ended up giving it to the founder during this interaction. This, though unfortunate, ended up being a blessing because after contracting COVID-19, Radio 254’s founder could not travel to the United States for two weeks and ended up staying in Kenya forever.

So, now that the radio was not just a collection of music that the founder would collect but a radio station with live shows, the founder of Radio 254 found it necessary to rent out a studio. At the time, the friend who had given the founder COVID had a space in Westland’s that had two rooms. One room had a music studio, and the other room was empty. So, a contract was signed (which we still have to this day), agreeing that the founder would pay 25,000 a month to rent out the unutilized room as a radio studio and the friend would run a music studio in the other room as both businesses would complement each other. At the time, it made perfect sense. To get the space, the founder paid a security deposit of 100,000 to the landlord.

On 1 April 2021, Radio 254 opened its doors at its first studio location at Jasmine Center in Westlands. As per the agreement, the founder of Radio 254 was to pay 25,000 per month, and the friend was to pay 25,000 a month in rent to the landlord. Please note that up to this point, the founder of Radio 254 did not sell shares to the friend or start any business together; the two were simply supposed to run two separate businesses in the same space that would complement each other like many have done before.

As Radio 254 began to grow, the friend (liar) texted the founder of Radio 254 (A text we still keep to this date) asking if it was okay for them to tell people that they owned the radio station. At the time, it did not matter to the founder what people thought as he was focused on trying to get as many people to know about Radio 254, so he agreed to let the friend lie. But that lie has gone on for far too long.

The friend who full well knew that he had zero involvement in the founding of Radio 254 took the lie a notch higher by referring to himself as the Co-Founder of Radio 254 something that he was immediately told to take down after it was realized the clout chaser had put on his Instagram bio that he was the co-founder of Radio 254. To appease the friend and keep the movement going, the founder of Radio 254 decided to give the liar the fake title of CEO.

And that is how the fake CEO was birthed. Fortunately, it did not last long, but despite being a lie, it is a lie that is still believed by many to this day. So how did we get rid of this whole mess? Let’s just say the lord works in miraculous ways! Part of the rental agreement was that each of us would pay rent separately to the landlord. We would pay our 25,000, and they would pay their 25,000. Every single month without fail, we would pay our 25,000 rent, so you can imagine the shock on our faces when the landlord told us we owed them money because the liar (CEO) had not paid their share of the rent for four months, so the landlord wanted 100,000 from us. We saw this as the opportunity it was and moved our equipment from that space and never looked back. The fake CEO still claims he was the CEO, but now you know. It was just FAKE! And we have all the contracts, receipts, and payments to prove it. Radio 254 was founded by Njukia Kiuri, who is the CEO, and there are no other co-founders or CEO’s.

Having a studio space will never be worth having fake co-founders or fake CEO’s. We have since had two studio spaces and are doing just fine. To anyone who thinks they made Radio 254, please make another one. You did it the first time, didn’t you?