Limuru 3, 'one man, one shilling' remind us of ethnic exclusion

 

The National Prayer Breakfast couldn’t have come at a better time. The President managed to calm the nerves of so many Kenyans whose anxieties were mounting due to the wording of the Finance Bill. By announcing that the Executive will cut its recurrent expenditure by 30 per cent, he indicated that he leads a compassionate administration.

God’s guidance and grace coupled with sound policy direction and prudent leadership remains a potent mix for a country’s take off economically and politically. We must pray for God’s grace because the challenges we face as a country are intricate and complex. Our politics is still held hostage by ethnic tenterhooks while our economy is not doing well enough to alleviate the anxieties of our young people burning with ambitions of upward social mobility. So many youths still don’t have the opportunities they legitimately deserve and intensely crave for.

It is for these reasons that I believe that we should never again seek to prescribe solutions to our governance challenges through narrow tribal lenses. As we seek to engender an active citizenry and enhance accountability among those in positions of responsibility, we must seek the success of every part of this country equitably.

Resorting to ethnic enclaves that elicit memories of ethnic domination, exclusion and favouritism points to a lack of political finesse. The same rebuke will be extended to those who cheer them on and those who remain indifferent while any one section of this country is demanding preferential treatment at the expense of everyone else.

The President must be given the political headroom to help us break new frontiers. We certainly cannot make any headway when we still have conversations such as one man, one vote one shilling for the simple reason that it is the very antithesis of the equitable society contemplated in Chapter 12 of the Constitution.

Equitability is important for the country as it would greatly help to temper down the legacy of ethnic animosity and mistrust. You know a society is equitable when outcomes such as access to healthcare, school enrollment and transition rate and life expectancy are largely even. But if you remember when President Barack Obama was here in 2015, he reminded us that there are still so many bridges we must to build.

He told us that child mortality was more prevalent in the former Nyanza province than in Central. That a girl born in the Rift Valley is far less likely to attend secondary school than a girl in Nairobi. To buttress what he said, I believe we must be sensitive to the history of exclusion and marginalisation in part as a consequence of the heritage of the Lunatic Express and brain-dead politics of yore that thrived on ethnic exclusion.

If the new champions of one 'man, one vote, one shilling' mantra are sincere in that they believe in building one united country where plenty is within our borders, then let us see them insisting on a revenue-sharing criteria that gives the child born in Migingo Island, deep in Lake Victoria, the same survival chance with the one born by the banks of River Chania in Kiambu County. To allay the fears that ethnic supremacists could still be roaming the corridors of power in designer suits, let us see them advocate that the revenue sharing should give a girl born in Tana River the same shot at education as the one born in Karen, Nairobi.

It is for these reasons that I reject the much-talked-about Limuru 3 and the calls for one man, one vote, one shilling. Both remind us of an era of raw, even juvenile, ethnic exceptionalism. If in doubt listen to stories of how Jomo’s government treated people from Nyanza, after Limuru 1 of 1966 and the eventual demise of Tom Mboya in 1969.

We must strive for national ecumenism to be a good example to the youth and to hand over a better country to the younger generation. For as Chinua Achebe puts it, "when the mother cow chews grass, its young ones watch its mouth".

 Mr Kidi is the convenor of Inter-Parties Youth Forum. [email protected]