Want to be Rich? Grow Grey Hair and Belong

Our national priorities often negate the very tenets of what we stand and aspire to become. Here we are as a nation crafting glossy vision 2030 which in light of what we practice is unwittingly designed to be an illusion at best and mirage at worst. Kenya is not drifting in the doldrums because of want or lack of policies. Far from it since almost every government office has its shelf suffocating from dusty white papers. The problem is these blueprints were all designed with the singular objective of not being implemented. Instead they were authored to create impressions of motion bereft of any real movement.

We live in a dynamic world that demands progressive leadership from in front and by example. Sadly for Kenya our fate rests with dinosaurs who are so allergic to new ideas they will readily and summarily dismiss any attempt to infuse creativity as insubordination. Our penchant to fall for TOKENISM for progress is infectious. When confronted by challenges we often seek quick fixes to wriggle ourselves out. In the meantime we leave the problem unresolved and on a worse scenario festering underneath to reappear with full furry at a later date.

Old is wood

The adage that old is gold is frequently used to intimidate or even cover up incompetence. What is passed as experience may as well be a catalogue of past failures that clouds your vision for a better and efficient route to success. At independence we correctly identified poverty, ignorance and disease as our primary enemies. But almost half century later we are still shamelessly shifting goal posts with coloured targets which are nothing but functions of the original malices.

Only in Kenya do you find greying technocrats who owe their positions exclusively to their native tongue. Just imagine only four permanent secretaries of strategic ministries share close to 250 years between them. And they are in good company starting with the civil service boss who has clocked more than 20,000 days on this planet and still counting while directing technical levers of the government. Smart Muthaura even knows how to draw an MP’s salary and more without the headache of campaigning. All he needs is a circular and hurrah a PS’s remuneration hits seven digits per month.

Road to nirvana

In the meantime, the most important cogs in the wheel of national wholesome development are relegated to the back banner. Getting rusty never killed or so it seems. Only when we start from the basics by squarely addressing the pillars of EDUCATION and HEALTH CARE will we mark a departure from our hitherto circular dance with tokenism. We must make no mistake is substituting quantity for quality. Making our dinosaur PSs millionaires every month is the epitome of inverted priority. Instead we could chose to permanently pave the road to nirvana by competitively remunerating our teachers, nurses and doctors.