Mr President, now disband your anti-corruption choir
Director for Medical Services Nairobi Metropolitan Services Josephine Kibaru-Mbae (left) receives Personal Protective Equipment from Chairperson Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Aga Khan University Medical College Prof Marleen Temmerman.
What you need to know:
- But the nature of the theft left us asking for extra masks to cover our faces in shame.
The gatecrashers gave the senators two options: to walk away from the people, or drive out with the police.
Kenyans were left with their mouths wide open this week, after watching the NTV exposé on those covering their identities using our face masks, and protecting their arrests with donated Covid-19 equipment.
The revelation did not come as a shocker to many, bearing in mind that one of the qualifications to acquire a Kenyan ID is to have 18 years’ experience in surviving government corruption.
But the nature of the theft left us asking for extra masks to cover our faces in shame.
Stealing is sinful, but if you belong to the gene pool that comes hard-wired with a theft chromosome, there are many things Kenyans would appreciate if you helped them steal: the microphone each time a Jubilee official wants to make a new election promise; the Ifmis password each time someone wants to wire public money into a private account, and Mike Sonko’s jewellery box before he appears on TV.
Collective destruction
We have arrived at that point where everyone must summon their God-given gift to rescue us from collective destruction. We cannot continue operating like this.
Every day there is a new scandal in this country. You try to be outraged by one season then the government reaches for the remote control and forwards to the next episode before you’re done watching. If this country was meant to be a movie, then the Kenya Film and Classification Board should publish the memo already; because at exactly the same time NTV was running the Covid exposé, three senators were receiving visitors over their stand on the division of revenue debate, on the eve of a crucial vote in the House.
The gatecrashers gave the senators two options: to walk away from the people, or drive out with the police. The senators chose the latter, and that is how they ended up being hauled like contraband goods being returned to the sender.
There is a need for the Kenya police to explain in diagrams why they have refused to graduate from a private force to a public service.
They can release new training manuals and change uniform all they want, but if they want to compete with alcohol on who can be abused the most, then Kenyans will have to ask the Health minister to open bars and places of enjoyment for alcohol to have a level playing field.
Roadside kiosk
The people who should have been arrested that night were the perpetrators of the Covid Millionaires heist, but the police are yet to summon them because they don’t eat breakfast in a roadside kiosk, and have the President’s number on speed dial.
Had it been a street hawker found to have corrupted his way into clearing Jack Ma’s donation from the airport go-downs, an entire police division would have been sent to break down his gate and throw in teargas just to make it good.
Now, the guy would be fighting giant bedbugs in the prison ring as mosquitoes cheer from the stands.
To call this a scandal is to give scandals a bad name. This is immorality. You cannot steal medical equipment meant to protect poor people. The heart might be for pumping blood, but you do not need a heart if you don’t have feelings for the poor in Covid intensive care struggling to stop theirs from dying.
The fact that no one in the exposé has been summoned to sing at the DCI headquarters makes a mockery of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s chorus on fighting corruption.
If the State House choir does not want to keep serving us broken records, then we advise that they have a sit-down with the President and advise him to remove anti-corruption lyrics in his videos.
