Let’s elevate sports to national conversation

President Uhuru Kenyatta with Kenya's team to last month's Commonwealth Games in Australia. The president's State of the Nation address last week didn't touch on sport. PHOTO | PSCU |

What you need to know:

  • Sport can help spur the “Big Four” agenda.
  • With increased sporting activity, medical bills will plummet and Kenya will boast a healthy population.
  • As more and more youths engage in gainful employment through sport, their purchasing power will increase and they will afford proper housing for their families.
  • They will engage in farming and help contribute to the nation’s food security.

President Uhuru Kenyatta’s State of the Nation address before the joint houses of Parliament last week was visionary, rich in content and reassuring.

Coming just weeks after the legendary “handshake”, it sought to pacify a polarized nation and attempted to sew together a tattered national fabric.

While re-emphasizing the “Big Four” agenda of affordable housing, improved industrialization, better healthcare and guaranteed food security, President Kenyatta implored the political class to spare us the incessant chest-thumping and supremacy battles that continue to drive a wedge between Kenyans.

He sought to drown the sort of political rhetoric regurgitated weekly at funerals where career sycophants use public address systems to sing praises of the king’s beard rather than mourn the departed.

“If we don’t put an end to unrestrained political competition, it will put an end to Kenya,” the Head of State wisely urged. I wonder if the court jesters ever listen!

The Commander-in-Chief also reiterated his commitment towards the war against graft, reminding us that his Jubilee administration had recovered Sh500 million in “ill-gotten public assets” and that “civil proceedings were instituted for the preservation and recovery of other assets valued at more than Sh6 billion.”

However, coming hardly three weeks after Kenya’s disastrous outing (by our lofty standards) at the 21st Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia, it saddens me that the president’s address steered painfully clear of the sports agenda.

President Uhuru Kenyatta with Kenya's team to last month's Commonwealth Games in Australia. The president's State of the Nation address last week didn't touch on sport. PHOTO | PSCU |

There is no gainsaying that sport remains integral to national development.

Sport can help spur the “Big Four” agenda. With increased sporting activity, medical bills will plummet and Kenya will boast a healthy population.

As more and more youths engage in gainful employment through sport, their purchasing power will increase and they will afford proper housing for their families. They will engage in farming and help contribute to the nation’s food security.

That over 35 per cent of the real estate industry in Uasin Gishu County, for instance, is run by athletes only goes to demonstrate the power of sport in nation building.

Income from sports will help spur investments in manufacturing and, therefore, contribute to the “Big Four” pillar of increased industrialization. In a nutshell, sport is integral to the Uhuru legacy.

It is vital to his “Big Four” agenda. Other than the glaring omission from the president’s address, sport also hardly featured at the recent Fifth Devolution Conference in Kakamega.

The more we relegate sport to the backburner, the more Kenya continues to lose a huge opportunity of engaging the youth in nation building.

And the more sport seldom features in the national conversation, the more recalcitrant state officials will continue to plunder meagre resources allocated to the sector in the national budget.

It’s laughable to see hardly any serious vote for sport in the County Assemblies with very few counties having utilised their annual, paltry allocation to improve sports infrastructure or support talent development.

President Kenyatta also indicated that he had signed the Division of Revenue Bill, 2018, setting aside Sh372 billion for counties in the next (2018/19) financial year.

What share will sport get in the 47 counties from this allocation? Even then, how has the money already voted for sports in the counties been used?

In some counties, County Sports Executives and Chief Officers have no clue of what their functions are, despite depleting the coffers on “benchmarking” trips that add no value on the ground.

The contrasts are heavy. While the Vihiga and Kisumu counties continue to support football teams (Vihiga United and Kisumu Hotstars) in the premier and national leagues, Kisii County’s Shabana FC, once the envy of a nation, continues to struggle with begging bowls in the third-tier league.

While Kakamega, Machakos, Mombasa and Narok have completed commendable stadium projects in their capitals and Uasin Gishu, Elgeyo-Marakwet, Meru and Nandi on course with upgraded facilities, Nyamira County continues to graze cattle on an enclosure earmarked as a “stadium project” in Manga division.

The only thing you will hear of sports projects in many counties are calls for tenders, where “tenderpreneurs” gleefully wait for the windfall and never deliver.

Many have lost faith, but I remain hopeful that the Jubilee government will elevate the sports agenda to national debate, besides prosecuting those found culpable in the embezzlement of funds, like those meant for our athletes at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

“I expect the new officials now in office in prosecution and investigations to bring cases against the most powerful and privileged, to show Kenyans that none of us are above the law,” the president said last week.

“I urge the Judiciary to do its part to ensure that orders are not frivolously used by the wealthy and corrupt individuals to avoid justice. I urge you, Hon. Members, to give us the legal tools we need to win the war against the lords of graft.”

Well, Sports Cabinet Secretary Rashid Echesa last week assured that the Rio report was before a parliamentary committee and that those implicated would be prosecuted.

I remain cautiously optimistic the MPs will act, and that our sport will at some point be taken seriously by those in authority.

Because it never is. Never has been. Most certainly not the sort of legacy President Kenyatta wishes to bequeath.