Police recruitment is here, I’m hopeful I will secure a spot at Kiganjo College

Folks, I think this is providential. Just as I was about to despair, the rains have pounded to guarantee a bountiful harvest.

I’m not talking of the April rains, and which I’m sure will ensure a handful of terere in my backyard; I’m talking about the enormous opportunities that have been announced this past week by way of police recruitment.

You and I know there was no scheduled recruitment at this time of the year, were it not for that mgogoro (controversy) over the conduct of the previous exercise, and which ended in the courts because, just like our polls, things were too muddled for one to know who deserved to head to Kiganjo for training.

I hear police trainers devised such ingenious ways of picking bribes, recruits would write the value of their bribes on the soles of their feet or palms of their hands, and draw arrows to point in the direction where the cash was stashed on their bodies.

All the police trainers needed was to pick the loot and endorse them as having passed the test.

But that’s now in the past; a fresh recruitment has been announced and yours truly is staking a claim.

Career switch

The future certainly looks bright if I manage this career switch, and the reasons are obvious: listening in to the screening of senior police officers recently, I was so impressed by the enormous wealth accumulated by the boys in blue.

As someone rightly pointed, Kiganjo college is producing more shrewd businessmen and entrepreneurs than some business schools in town, judging by the number of police millionaires.

I didn’t know the Government offers such good opportunities, but these are plain facts: A policeman is housed — never mind the quality of the dwellings, a house is a place we burrow to sleep, nothing else — at the police lines.

The uniform is also given free, as are the boots, socks, shirts and pants. I forgot the hat and baton.

So in all probabilities, all a policeman buys himself is the underwear, but even that could be provided free if he manages to get a spouse at work. Put another way, a policeman’s pay is 100 per cent profit.

I did not factor any other expenses because a man eats where he worketh, so lunch and dinner will be provided by what one might call police support services that come in the form of matatu and long distance drivers, street walkers and other vagabonds.

Brute labour

I’m listing the socially acceptable sources of bribes; some other businesses are too crude, and I suspect our boys in blue are too conscientious to accept their money.

As we all witnessed, questions about their sources of wealth proved too painful for some, who shed tears at the mere suggestion of their financial impropriety.

But a career in the police force is not just lucrative in the long run, it is also, quite honestly, much easier to access — and I’m not talking about offering inducements to anyone.

For starters, the academic threshold has been lowered, I hear, to consider primary school graduates.

This is not dumbing down as some claim; policing, after all, is about brute labour, men and women in boots stomping their way around town. Heavy police presence is all that’s needed to scatter criminals and other threats to our safety.

The interview itself doesn’t constitute much: just stripping down to the waist, opening your mouth to ensure you haven’t lost teeth fighting in kumi kumi dens and doing a lap of honour to celebrate what seems like an inevitable triumph in securing the job.

So I have been thinking to myself: I may be a middle-aged man, but I don’t mind doing a strip tease to expose my beer pouch in public, if that act guarantees limitless prospects of feeding the belly.

In any case, after the training, I am assured of a job for a lifetime since the force is unlikely to lay workers off or worry about profitability — other than my own.

This opportunity is godsend, so don’t be surprised if you see me in the beeline for police recruitment.