Somebody tell Mbadi we're sick and dying as a nation, so let's die in private dignity

Treasury CS John Mbadi before the Departmental Committee on Finance and National Planning, at Glee Hotel, Kiambu Road, on January 13, 2026. [Elvis Ogina, Standard]

John Mbadi, the Treasury Cabinet Secretary, is the maverick who has reportedly cast a magic wand on the economy, precipitating an unexpected outcome: the nation’s GDP is on an upward trajectory, even though the economy has contracted and the citizens are damn broke.

Mbadi's purported economic wizardry is akin to what youths in the streets call pandisa, which means a fanciful conflation of things. I’d call it a pack of crap, but since I’m respectful, I’ll spare that epithet to assess Mbadi’s diatribe earlier in the week, when he admonished Kenyans for their rejection of US efforts to access our health data.