Let All Kenyans Support The Government In Looting The State

The rampart eventualities of the cases of mega-corruption perpetrated by government officers in Kenya is nothing else but a true out-come of entrenched and persistent ethnic consciousness among the people of Kenya as well as strong tribal ideology among the political leaders. Thus, let me start this essay by giving an ethnic picture of Kenyan politics for the sake of my international readers that have never been to Kenya, perhaps before I comment on other technical forces that have always made the government to be thieving from the state of Kenya.

Let us go; Kenya has around forty five different ethnic nations; this is so when we include the Kenyan whites, Indians, Arabic and the legitimized Sudanese. The Gikuyu nation is the second largest after the Luhyia Nation, then Kalenjin and then Luo. The Gikuyu nation has provided the president for three times averaging to the Kikuyu nation ruling Kenya for fifty years. The Kalenjin nation has only provided a president for once and vice president twice. The Kalenjin president ruled Kenya for twenty four years. Luo and Luhyia nations have never managed to have one of their own to be Kenya’s president; however these are the two key communities that have supplied competent professionals, honest politicians, and scholars, religious leaders and political ideologues to Kenya and other parts of the world. The Luos and Luhyia are also chiefly involved in opposition politics, trying to bring democratic and inclusive politics into Kenya’s political socialization. Whythe Gikuyu and Kalenjin have been the only ones dominating Kenya’s executive politics is a fact technically I can personally ascribe to colonialism, tribalism and post-colonial corruption in Kenya.

A historical perspective of the above condition is that Kenya became a colonial-free statein 1963 and immediately became pseudo-colony, a situation in which it has been for the past six decades. I have used the word pseudo-colony here to mean the subjective condition in which the people of Kenya havebeen forced into through perpetration of oppressive corruption,extra-judical killings,govenement looting the state, academic mediocrity, exclusive hiring for government jobs,ethnicity,impugnity , fear and as well as anxiety peddled by the successive governments. These are the same evil things that colonialism did; the only difference is that they are now being done by elected black leaders, hence my choice of the word pseudo-colonialism in describing them. However, other terms like,black-colonialism, self-colonialism or African political masochism would have done the same job in describing political misfortunes that often befell the poor and the masses of Africa, Kenya being a beacon of it all as per now.

Currently, the national government in Kenya has used its loyalists to lootmore than seven billion Kenya shillings from the state treasury. They have done all these through government procurement misdealing, wheel-dealing and out-right looting. The ploys that government has used to perpetrate these mega-corruptions are in famous Euro-bond issue, Chicken-gate falsehood, National youth services procurement, standard gauge railway procurement and ministry of procurement. The previous government looted around four billion in a ploy known as Anglo-leasing. Surprisingly all the above thieveries have been committed by political leaders from the same ethnic nation at the cost of other forty-four ethnic nations. What I mean is that the incumbent government and its loyalists loot because they are guided by a philosophy that it’s their time to eat.

All these happen out of the opportunity provided by Kenya’s social situation of trenchant tribalism and ethnicity. The common Kenyan thinks that a bad politician is that one from a different tribe. But all good politicians are the one from my own tribe. This means that when a politician loots the state he or she is doing so on behalf of his ethnic community. A corrupt political leader in Kenya is only wrong in the eyes of the international media and some local objective media but a hero in his or her community. Evidently, all political leaders in Kenya accused of corruption have always managed to be re-elected back for four or five times into the parliament or other electible political offices. This is also the same psychology that made Kenyans to vote for the current president and the deputy president when the two were suspects at International Criminal Court facing charges of crime against humanity, rape, murder and forceful eviction of persons. All these happened against the evidential reality that more than two thousand people had been killed in the politically influenced violence and more than two million people had been rendered internally displaced.

Surprisingly, the people of Kenya have been nonchalantly wearing the dark blinkers to such open sores of the nation, for no other reason but ethnicity. As if it is better for a fellow Kenyan to be murdered rather having a political leader from a Kenyancommunity triedby a foreign court. This is categorically a social perversity that Frantz Fanon described as pitfalls of national consciousness in his book The Wretched of the Earth.

I want to promise the world that the current president and deputy president of Kenya and all corrupt County government leaders in Kenya are going to be re-elected back during the next year’s general election. The Five billion shillings stolen through public health procurement falsification and a billion shillings stolen through national youth service procurement rackets, all perpetrated by friends and close relatives to the president will not fetter ,even an iota, the current president, Uhuru Victor Kenyatta from being re-elected back for the next five year term of presidency. And by the way, this is how Kenya is; to be in power is your turn to steal. If this is the government perpetrated social convention, then what else can those not in governments do? Is it not convenient for them to join the government and support the politicians to loot from the state?

Alexander Opicho
(From Lodwar, Kenya)