Everyday industrious Kenyans wake up early in the morning and hurriedly rush to their favourite newspaper vendors to purchase papers of their choice. They don’t buy these papers for fun or as meat wrappers, they purchase these papers in the hope that the news they will meet inside will give them hope for a better tomorrow. Job opportunities being advertised, scholarships being offered and tenders available competitively.
But from the front headline on how someone is eating eat while others watch with their eyes to how a hairdresser managed to register twenty companies and wins tenders worth a billion and gets paid within months while a university graduate with an undergraduate degree in business management has never signed a single LPO worth fifty shillings since he left campus seven years ago, he realises that the word hope to him in this country only exists in the dictionaries.
In a country of forty millionaires and forty million peasants, you realise that if you exist as the latter you have nothing left to lose. So, your only hope is left into the unforgiving hands of your favourite betting company. That’s the only other time you realise that hope can really be outside the dictionay.'huyu muindi lazima anijue leo' (this betting company owner must lose to me today).
Because the Kaburas share between themselves figures that you can only dream of, even though you worked tirelessly like a donkey to pay that tax they are chewing, you desperately dig deep into your pockets and stake your whole life in a bid to land that jackpot and join the millionaires club. Kenyans would rather lose a football bet than pay tax and lose it to an individual they elected to protect their resources.
So, all these senators and members of parliament whining on how betting is swindling kenyans, should first of all provide a solution to the large stomachs in government offices and seal the loopholes of public looting, since a loss is a loss, whether in betting or in 'Mafya House' or in NYS. Let me rush and place a stake, I have a sure bet that kicks off in an hours’ time.
The Standard Group Plc is a
multi-media organization with investments in media platforms spanning newspaper
print operations, television, radio broadcasting, digital and online services. The
Standard Group is recognized as a leading multi-media house in Kenya with a key
influence in matters of national and international interest.
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