Mr Kenyatta’s diary neglects thousands of starving Kenyans
Children at Loperot village in Kalapata, Turkana South District, carry food rations their families received from the Kenya Red Cross Society at a relief food distribution centre in this file picture. Kenya is not prepared for another spike in global and regional food prices.
What you need to know:
- But he can at least show a bit of sensitivity to the plight of the ordinary Kenyan in distress.
- Parading South Sudanese detainees before the cameras at State House the next day demonstrated how much the ICC has created the continent’s latter-day foremost pan-Africanist warrior.
- Yet it would have made a world of difference if President Kenyatta had himself taken charge and rallied a national response.
Being the duly elected President of the Republic of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta can say what he wants when he wants.
But he can at least show a bit of sensitivity to the plight of the ordinary Kenyan in distress.
By coming out on national television to defend his government’s railway project against scandal allegations on Tuesday and roaring that “the railway will be built”, he might have succeeded in reminding all and sundry that he is his father’s son — the apple does not fall far from the tree, anyway.
Similarly, parading South Sudanese detainees before the cameras at State House the next day demonstrated how much the ICC has created the continent’s latter-day foremost pan-Africanist warrior.
But it still beats me how our President arrived at the decision that these two issues somehow deserved more of his personal attention than the unfolding human disaster in Turkana where a desperate woman was reported to have served a dog meal to keep her hungry family alive for the day.
Why did he pass up the chance to articulate his government’s response to a drought and hunger threat that we have since learnt is much bigger than earlier thought?
Devolution Secretary Anne Waiguru, in whose docket the disaster management and response falls, told a press conference on Wednesday that Marsabit, Mandera, Wajir, Garissa, Isiolo, Samburu, West Pokot, Baringo, Laikipia, Tana River, Kwale, Kilifi and Taita Taveta were also in trouble.
The President’s hawkish fans will point to the fact that he left it to his able Agriculture and Devolution ministers to coordinate the humanitarian efforts in Turkana.
True, some trucks carrying relief supplies have been flagged off to Turkana in the last few days after Ms Waiguru and her Agriculture counterpart Felix Koskei called two separate press conferences to talk about the same thing on Thursday.
Yet it would have made a world of difference if President Kenyatta had himself taken charge and rallied a national response.
And heck, no caring President jumps onto a plane to attend a routine African Union talk shop in Ethiopia, leaving behind 1.7 million of his countrymen facing starvation.
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Meanwhile Kris Njoroge, responding to my column urging Kenyan policymakers to learn from India’s food subsidy programme in the war against hunger, couldn’t have put it better in his email:
“The key is for us to find our moral compass.
This will determine and influence our national consciousness.
Nations that have succeeded in improving the wellbeing of their citizens have diligently followed their national consciousness, spirit and direction with zeal, urgency and sense of purpose.
We shall finally be able to cure Kenya’s policymakers of their malady of vagueness and self-importance.”
Otieno Otieno is chief sub-editor, Business Daily. Twitter: @otienootieno [email protected]
