Romeo India Papa And Other Military Alphabet Words You Need To Know About

• Social media groups which post content about police officers or military men left many Kenyans with questions with the phrase Romeo India Papa
• Many Kenyans could not decipher the meaning behind the phrase easily, save for those with military and police affairs enthusiasts
• The National Trans-Atlantic Organisation (NATO) phonetic alphabet breaks down and contextualises the use of Romeo India Papa phrase in posts about the deaths of officers

Michael Ollinga is a journalist at TUKO.co.ke with over 10 years of experience covering courts and crimes, special reports, and current affairs in Kenya.

Whenever a member of the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF), Kenya Police, or Kenya Police Reservists dies, the phrase Romeo India Papa is likely to be used.

Military and police social media pages in Kenya

In Kenya, for example, social media groups and pages associated with military and police affairs use this term in posts reporting the deaths of servicemen or while sending condolences.

Many people online have seen the phrase, but few understand what it means and draw their own conclusions, most of which could be wrong.

Last week, a Kenyan military helicopter carrying Chief of Defence Forces General Francis Ogolla and 11 other military officers crashed at the border of West Pokot and Elgeyo Marakwet county, killing 10 officers.

Kenya mourns 10 Kenya Defence Forces officers

Kenya Military History, a Facebook page that shares stories about soldiers and officers who served in the KDF, posted several photos of the casualties. The accompanying captions included the phrase Romeo India Papa.

TUKo.co.ke established that all the photos of the military officers who died in the crash had Rome India Papa as part of the caption.

TUKO.co.ke sought to demystify the coded meaning behind the phrase the military insiders and enthusiasts used.

Cops Kenya, a Facebook page that posts content about police officers and security personnel in the country, used the phrase in a post to mourn General Francis Ogolla and other fallen soldiers.

What's the meaning of Romeo India Papa?

In efforts to give meaning and context to the phrase's usage, TUKO.co.ke established that Romeo India Papa was drawn from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) phonetic alphabet.

NATO is a collective defence organisation comprising 32 countries in Europe and North America that was founded in 1949 with the core aim of protecting the people of its territories.

Therefore, the NATO phonetic alphabet comprises a set of words that are used instead of letters, mostly in oral communication, such as through a phone or military radio.

Each of the code words stands for the initial letters or alphabetic symbols. This means that the 26 letters of the English alphabet have a phonetic equivalent in the NATO alphabet.

Here is how the NATO phonetic alphabet, sometimes referred to as the military alphabet, looks:

Therefore, from the above alphabet, it is accurate to deduce that Romeo India Papa is an equivalent of Rest in Peace, commonly abbreviated as RIP.

General Ogolla was buried in his Ng'iya home on Sunday, April 21, a day that he was set to open a church he helped to build.

Proofreading by Jackson Otukho, a multimedia journalist and copy editor at TUKO.co.ke