President Uhuru Kenyatta Holds Unique Opportunity to Preside Over Rebirth of the Nation.

President Uhuru Kenyatta’s task before ascending to power was clear cut- weed out corruption in government, which translates to decimating graft within his ranks and file of close associates and friends.

Prior to his take over from former President Mwai Kibaki,the economy was on the upward trajectory with minimal reliance on external  debts.  There was increased revenue catchment for the government providing a large pool of finance. The social economic landscape was recovering with more access to basic education and expansion of tertiary education up take as well as increase in tertiary college and universities.

The health sector improved with dispensaries mushrooming in villages and public hospitals equipped with the very necessary in basic drugs and vital clinical apparatus.

For ksh.20 , you enjoyed seamless basic healthcare at a local dispensary.  There was expanded infrastructural development programme with little foreign financing.

Electricity connectivity via the Rural Electrification Programme increased and majority of Kenyans who their remotest dreams never fathomed of being connected were made part of the grid.

Classrooms were constructed via active CDF facilitation to accommodate surging numbers of returnees who had dropped out of school due to punitive school fees which the Kibaki administration abolished. 

Basically, he was setting grounds for the quality of life of that ordinary fisherman and his family in the village to be on a positive deviation.

Fast forward 2013, a jubilant ‘youthful’ government takes over with a myriad of promises most of which are scantily met or turn out to be major failures. The ICT policy for schools for example began but never tottered beyond the first step. The various stadiums and sporting facilities promised have stalled from lack of finances or sheer corruption that saw public money find home in private pockets.

In short public projects equaled to siphoning public finance.

Apparently, what President Kibaki achieved through increase in tax bracket and revenue pool was betrayed by insatiable appetite for looting and grabbing. It seemed like the incoming cohorts –majority of whom were KANU (a near defunct, clueless party that presided over cementing of corruption to the roots) orphans had no idea what to do with all these amount of monies generated.

The monies had to go.

Toward the second term, the jubilee government quickly buries its head in the sand, forgets about the manifestos they dangled before electorates in 2013 and morphed into a gigantic monster keen at devouring anything on sight. To mainstream the looting and stealing,the jubilee fellows coined another slogan cum policy-The Big Four agenda.

The 'Big Four' morphed into a big money scheme, a systematized way of stealing public funds through inflated tendering and outright robbery from arm-twisting of contractors and other players.  

The so called Big Four agenda was pegged on Universal Health Care,Manufacturing,Affordable Housing and Food Security. At the time I was writing this piece on march 2019, the country was facing severe drought- 12 million people in Kenya were facing acute starvation with reports citing 5 deaths out of hunger and malnutrition. There is no Subsidy on fertilize and farmers were at the mercy of blood sucking profit-oriented corporations and their brokers.

The most absurd irony is that an assortment of grains is rotting in Government Silos, nearly a quarter of the estimated 54 Million Kenyan population is threatened to be wiped away by hunger. All this marinated by the embedded corruption gnawing away monies allocated for remedial measure such building of dams for irrigation (Aror and Kimwarer) and development of irrigation schemes like the Galana Kulalu.

For the records, Galana Kulalu was Ksh.7B project that got buried in the soil. A prominent politician in the country remarked that the monumental amount of figures involved in graft has become an ordinary noise in the ears that ‘just a few billions’ sounds like ordinary pocket change.

Even to non-economics oriented mind, this is a recipe for inflation and all the ugly repercussions that accompany it.  

Whereas food water scarcity is a headline issue, so is the perennial floods that is expected –just as usual-to wipe away homes, people and livestock later into the year.

As is the norm,the Government's  position as religiously recited by the Deputy President's a certain Dr. William Ruto is that of denial. He negates that  hunger is a glaring menace in Kenya and holds that the actual state of corruption in the country is grossly exaggerated.

For a man of his reputation, a man accustomed to being accused of wanton pilferage and plunder of the public coffer, and programmed to lie and deny even when caught literally with sugar on the lips, this looks like raw guts or sheer arrogance. The utterances rubbed in as insensitive to Kenyans killed by gnawing pangs of hunger choreographed by excesses in state- sanctioned corruption in public service that denied them a livelihood ,killing them at the end of it.

Universal health care  programme is on the pilot stage in a few counties of Nyeri,Kisumu,Isiolo and Machakos. While at it, mothers in Pumwani Maternity Hospital still lose their newborns due to poor maternity care, patients are held hostage at Kenyatta National Hospital due to unpaid medical bills and families are impoverished by costly burdens while accessing health services across the republic.

On the other front cancer is becoming such national scourge, threatening to wipe out populations. Gory statistics by an independent doctor revealed that out of 50 women tested for cervical cancer,11 registered positive.

 Large chunks of urban population, (over a half) live in slums and inhumane environment that deprive them of basic human dignity. Most of the rural folks live in mud structures like rodents. Accessibility to clean water is still a farfetched dream to the majority as devolution is yet to hit the grassroots.

County governments ride on public relations, giving excessive publicity to a million shillings projects while hauling billions into private pockets.

As if jostled from a deep slumber, President Kenyatta has made half-hearted efforts to crack down on the monstrous predator of corruption that has threatened to choke his administration. Corruption danced naked   in the daylight right at his doorstep. This was not made any easier by rising political temperatures due to contested presidential election of 2017 that saw a country on the verge of collapse.

His deputy, a man who christened himself ‘hustler’ (a lousy street poor fellow out there to eke a living by hook or crook),has been the epicenter of all corruption allegations and finger pointing. He has been the living embodiment of corruption, impunity and arrogance.

In their 1st half of Jubilee tenure, the clever political schemer that is the deputy president had woven himself into government-making himself synonymous with all things government, spread tentacles all over all government ministries and parastatals, sucking and chocking in equal measure, grabbing and swallowing anything and everything with speed and gusto…

On realizing that the country would sink under the appetite of one man and his army of bandits, in addition to push by an overwhelming force of the opposition demands, the president had to call in reinforcement.

On the bright day of March 9, 2018, the unthinkable happened. Emerging from the corridors of Harambee House Nairobi, were two sworn political enemies-the seemingly naïve President Uhuru Kenyatta and a conniving political bustard of the first order, the opposition chief- Raila Odinga.

Odinga,a  known boat wrecker and fierce mass mobilize had again wiggled his way to the apex of power. They announced the end to an Odinga choregraphed political stalemate that preceded a hotly contested presidential election and promised to work together consummating their new found romance in what came to be known as the Handshake.

The unfolding events caught the Deputy President Dr.William Ruto, his associates and other merchants of corruption and status quo flat foot. Raila Odinga was a well known schemer in the Kenyan political circles. He was also one of the top contenders in post Uhuru succession politics along with Ruto.

As part of the Handshake deal , a committee was drafted to roam and rove the country to establish ‘what ails’ Kenya and furnish the president with ‘recommendations’ and remedies to the countries perennial woes especially during elections. Some say the president and Opposition leader already have formed opinion of what the so-formed committee should propose.

Along with the handshake, the President re-organized the Office of the Directorate of Public Prosecution and that of the Directorate of criminal Investigations, giving them more muscles and bite-power to tackle corruption issues.

This was lauded as a push in the right direction and the president enjoyed popularity from earlier attempts to shake up corruption and go for big fish as opposed to the past traditions where smaller one were sacrificed.

The only hiccup to the president’s resolve is poor investigations(by design or default), sabotages and perceived corruption fighting back throwing spanner into the works. The judiciary is accused of watering down prima-facie cases ,DCI accused of shoddy investigations and  key evidential material disappeared in Houdini fashion.

The president  was also accused of babysitting corrupt, docile and inept cabinet secretaries. He has been accused of all barking and no bite. There were dramatic arrests of so called big fishes but no notable convictions.  Almost all cabinet secretaries under his command have been tainted with corruption after being mentioned in various reports and investigated for culpability.

In  well meaning democracies these secretaries would willingly resign or be laid off.

Another impediment to the president’s war on corruption has been politicization on the war by furious henchmen of justice and crusaders of corruption. 

Well placed players accustomed to impunity, leveled accusation at the DCI  during political rallies and engaged the time tested tribal card on the emotions of gullible and susceptible poor masses. They claimed that their communities were being targeted in the war on corruption. Whereas the masses suffer direct consequences of systemic corruption, they are happy to back their tribal chief in the spirit of the ghost of tribe.

When the deputy president is accused of dalliance with corruption, the president draws distances. A section of the Rift Valley region politicians peddled a narrative to their constituents that the president has neglected the region-one of his solid political base. They conjured up a narrative that should the president (a Kikuyu) not support the DP (a Kalenjin), there is bound to be a repeat of tribal clashes between these two communities a la 2007. And the masses gladly, gullibly believed this account.

The cash cow has been milked and looted dry. Desperate to revamp its fortune, the government via a compromised Speaker of the National Assembly and the Majority Leader forced down Kenyans throats, a law that that increased V.A.T on fuel. This is despite clear rejection of the bill by majority of National Assembly legislators.

In another desperate attempt to develop another pool of funds, the Government  frolicking in bed with labour union COTU secretary general a Mr.Atwoli , is scheming to fleece all employed person of their hard earned cash via introduction of housing levy - a cunning scheme geared towards curving out 1.5% of workers basic salary to a purported housing scheme.

The irony of all this is that a worker contributes to a scheme he is not guaranteed of benefitting from . The scheme also aimed at fronting ‘affordable’ mortgages to workers has no regard whether that worker already owns a house or is already servicing other housing mortgages. All will suffer. It makes an erroneous assumption that all workers have no houses and are in desperate need of ‘cheap’ housing.

For a government with affinity for misappropriating public funds, this move appears not only deceitful but in bad taste to most workers.

 But President Kenyatta task is still clear cut. He still has a ye few years left to make a lasting impact into the lives of Kenyan living today and the posterity. He has to streamline how Kenya conducts it governance business. He has to redefine public ethics to its true meaning (not as known by Kenyans today), set clear principles and establish new standards on how to manage public resources that no one can operate below.

 Above all he holds the key to reprogramming the national mentality on public employment and expectations from a public servant.

 He has to by all means put an end to all this public suffering occasioned by all these corruption madness and mismanagement of public resources.

As it stands now President Uhuru Kenyatta has an opportunity to preside over a rebirth of a nation. But again he can choose to play lame duck like he has during most parts of his term and let the country veer into auto-pilot mode. After all  the status-quo favours his immediate personal and family interests.

Power Plays and Where the Buck Stops

‘The buck stops here’ an inscription on the walls at Harry Truman’s office, a self guided and instructed statement that described the character of a man in the person of the president and the acceptance, cognition of the huge responsibility that his office shouldered.

Not only that but harry Truman knew very well the need to shoulder that responsibility and the fact that he is accountable to the people of the former political and economic empire that was U.S.A.

That behooves me to call into silence the ‘o happy naïve’ rag dolls -citizens of Nairobi who have been directing their congratulation on war on graft to the wrong quarter- office of the DPP. The correct address should be guarded gates of statehouse.

There sitting is the son of the 1^st president of the republic ,and now president, whose father is credited with a nation plunder characterized by state-patronized corruption and wanton, unchecked looting of public resources.

The 1^st president orchestrated the stealing by servant thing that employment in public service was seen as reward for people for a dip into the public coffers-and of course with a regular handout(commission sort of)to the benefactor politicos that fixed one the employment.

The son of the deceased 1^st president being the beneficiary of his father’s looting lunacy is wealthy enough (in little need of material acquisition of property) and well poised to stop further damage by the rest of the wannabe mass looters. He therefore is not so much predisposed to stealing as his father had already done the dirty job for him. He is therefore in a better position to conduct the damage control and kill this corruption dragon clipping at the neck of a nation. This is where the buck stops now.

Now that he has taken a pugilist’s stance on lords of grafts and the yelling and yapping is all over the streets, the naïve natives, sons of  poor men are giving glory to the DPP.