This archive report was first published on 21 September 2019.
Published on September 21, 2019, by Tee Ngugi, a Nairobi-based political commentator, this article paints a dire picture of Kenya's current state.
Characteristics of developed countries include a committed leadership, mobilized citizens, set milestones, and accountability for delays and inefficiency. In contrast, Kenya's leadership is plagued by an underhand power struggle, hindering national progress.
Departments lack coordinated vigor, and personnel and systems meant to facilitate progress instead hold it back. Corruption is rampant, with junior officers becoming millionaires and senior officers becoming billionaires.
Parliament, the custodian of national purpose, is a theatre of insults, incoherent verbosity, posturing, and tribal demagoguery. MPs scheme to increase their salaries and take bribes in toilets to vote a certain way.
Primary school children are gassed unconscious to grab their school field, aid money is stolen, and famine kills villagers and herdsmen. The headlines next day show pictures of relief trucks being flagged off, with politicians' pictures emblazoned on the sides.
Death through starvation is not an occasion for national shame; it's a God-given opportunity for self-promotion. Poverty increases, slums mushroom and expand, crime soars, and death becomes a constant companion.
A senator warns those opposed to the deputy president, and an MP declares proudly on national TV that he is a sycophant. A self-confessed sycophant likening himself to a hero of the Second Liberation is a historical sacrilege.
A scorched-earth kind of politics is taking hold, dividing the citizenry into tribes competing against one another. Political parties no longer care to present candidates of integrity or competence, and anyone will do, even celebrities with no idea about national development.
One such dimwit threatened foreigners doing business in Kenya, ignorant of the danger to which he was exposing tens of thousands of Kenyans working abroad. The counties have morphed into tribal fiefdoms, and Kanu-era land grabbers in the Mau Forest continue to put lives and livelihoods at risk.
Citizens who can escape go to be killed in South Africa or to drown in the Mediterranean. The sense that the country is hurtling down a dark road to a dark hole is very real.
