Kenyan comedian David Oyando, popularly known as Mulamwah, has come forward to address why he always finds himself at the centre of online controversy, saying it is a deep-rooted issue stemming from the fact that internet users have, from the very beginning, simply found pleasure in hating him.
Speaking during an exclusive sit-down with the Iko Nini podcast on Friday, May 2, 2025, the comedian shared that he feels as though he launched his entertainment career on the wrong footing and added that he has since been trying to make sense of it all, as fans began trolling him from the moment he posted his very first video online.
“Mulamwah is someone I’d say started his career off on the wrong foot. Yaani, he’s someone who has been hated right from the very first video, kabisa,” he said.
Mulamwah further shared that he often finds himself baffled by the magnitude of hatred consistently directed at him, noting that although he initially believed the negativity was solely targeted at him, even the women he dates often end up becoming targets of public scorn.
He added that even when he ends such relationships, thinking perhaps it’s the women drawing the negative attention, he ends up shocked to see that the hatred continues just as intensely even in their absence.
According to him, even his children had not been spared from the hate, with the most recent wave of online backlash erupting after he unveiled the face of his child with his estranged girlfriend, Ruth K.
“Even when I meet a lady and we start dating, that woman will start getting attacked just like that, for no reason. You’ll have a child, and still, it’s hatred. Even when you break up with her, the hate continues. You find someone new, and still, even if you split, it doesn’t stop. So we did a face reveal, and you know how Kenyans are… They claim they’re showing love by trying to get your attention,” he explained.
Mulamwah shared that during the baby’s face reveal, netizens hurled all sorts of shade his way — some trying to compare the baby’s looks to those of random people, while others simply mocked his appearance without reason.
He lamented that the backlash at the time was so intense but was quick to clarify that he took comfort in the fact that such reactions are normal in a digital space where people often attempt to gain your attention by throwing every imaginable insult your way.
“They’ll insult even a child, saying how they look and throwing all sorts of nonsense. The online world is wild. As artists, we’ve come to understand that. That same hater will move on and go for Bahati, then go for Pozee next. You might find they insult up to 50 people a day,” he said.
Jab at Obinna
However, while clarifying that he does not take offence because he understands that this kind of behaviour is normal from fans, he took a swipe at his most recent rival, Oga Obinna, saying that it’s people like him who take minor jabs from netizens and escalate them into full-blown episodes of trolling.
He cited the recent incident involving his child, which had seen the two exchange a series of heated words online, and said it was wrong for Obinna to pick up on the trolling about his child and justify discussing it on his show by claiming that it wasn’t him who said it, but rather the netizens.
Mulamwah strongly criticised Obinna, saying it was completely wrong for him to bring up hateful comments about his child on such a popular platform, as it made it look like he was using the trolling for personal gain—and that doing so only made the online abuse worse.
“But now someone picks up that story and brings it to a podcast like this, under the excuse that ‘people were the ones saying it’. Why are you trying to commercialise that? Then you distance yourself by acting like you’re just reporting—claiming people were saying, ‘Mulamwah’s child looks like this and that’, and then you laugh. Is that really something to laugh about? These are things we call in-house matters. Let fans remain fans. Don’t go picking up what they throw around and bring it onto a podcast like I’m supposed to sit and listen to that. It should not even be a discussion topic. When you do that, the trolling that was already going on becomes something much bigger and nastier,” he said.
Watch the video here:
Online target
The remarks by the father of two came a paltry two weeks after he called on netizens to give him a breather after spending an entire week as the internet’s most talked-about figure.
In a Facebook post on Wednesday, April 23, 2025, Mulamwah insisted that he had reached a point where constantly trending online had worn him down, urging netizens to find someone else to obsess over and let him rest.
“Nimechoka kutrend, mtu mwingine ajitokeze sasa, atrend iko bana, eei,” Mulamwah posted.
The comedian’s expression of frustration had come hot on the heels of his stand-up comedy show dubbed ‘Let Me Explain’, which went down at the Kenya National Theatre on Sunday, April 20, 2025.
The trolls that followed the show were largely provoked by his own remarks that he had planned the entire performance with zero expectations of anyone actually turning up to support him—a sentiment that sent online debates into overdrive.
During the show, Mulamwah did an interview with YouTubers and confessed that he was genuinely surprised by the turnout, saying that he had not known that people would show him such love, even throwing subtle shade at netizens for rarely showing physical support despite being notoriously loud online.
“I knew there isn’t much genuine support online, so when I decided to begin, I did so with that truth already embedded in my mind—I knew I was walking this road solo, counting only on those who would choose to stand with me—and although you might have seen my friends, the ones I did videos with and collaborated with, in the end, I was the one spearheading the whole project, and that, right there, is what made support the greatest challenge,” he shared back then.
This landed him on the receiving end of sharp criticism, with some netizens, particularly TikTokers, interpreting his remarks in various ways, questioning why he would think people wouldn’t support him when they often show up for other celebrities during their shows.