A moaning Governor Johnson Sakaja, sobbing surprisingly like he arrived in Nairobi yesterday, left cynics trying to remember who was the immediate former senator of Nairobi City County.
One cynic entered a cryptic comment, on social media, about an unannounced arrival of the governor of Minnesota at a public function in Nairobi. The visiting governor arrived in Roysambu, straight from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.
The visiting governor of the midwestern US state had no preview of the occasion and the audience he would be addressing. He had no background knowledge of what lay ahead. He wasn’t emotionally prepared for the deprivation he would witness.
The Sakaja teary circus echoed the late Margaret Thatcher’s visit to Nairobi in 1988. Thatcher visited during the end of the first decade of President Daniel arap Moi’s rule. The choice of Kibera slum, and giving the tour a prime spot in the VIP itinerary, was regretted after the prime ministerial roasting, on site, of top government officers.
Then British Prime Minister, Thatcher was taken on an aerial tour of Nairobi, above the sprawling Kibera slum. From the air, the tenements could pass for pig dens – a case of intensive urban farming.
The PM’s VIP chaperones had to find a way of explaining the deprivation of the flight area below the chopper. Thatcher soon understood human beings lived in the shanties. She was baffled – she showed it.
Thatcher: “What are you doing to improve the living conditions of these people?”
Chaperone: “We intend to… we plan to do slum upgrading.”
Thatcher: “Please, tell me what you are doing…what have you done about it?
Chaperone: “We will be allocating Sh10 billion for a slum upgrading programme.”
Thatcher: “Mmmmm, I see.”
Sakaja’s tears, and a consoler’s donation of a piece of serviette to wipe gubernatorial tears, showed that during his tenure as senator, the man did not interact with the other side of the city. There are no previous records of Sakaja weeping over the plight of Nairobi children.
For five years as senator, Sakaja never spared a moment to understand this deprived constituency. He never visited, and cried, in the informal slum schools to empathise with the plight of the suffering little souls.
If, indeed he did, and did nothing about it, then those VIP tears were faked for a purpose. One would have expected Sakaja to spare time in the House and bring a Bill to force government to improve the conditions of city public schools.
The tears would have taken a different meaning in the Senate, even persuading others to support the cause.
Cynics read a hidden purpose in the tears. It is the hypocrisy that underlies routine political actions. How like politicians react to situations they have abetted. Sakaja and his political type love to milk mileage out of the suffering of voters.
This was one such occasion for Sakaja to exploit tears to steal the show. For cynics, the plot for mileage collapsed flat with the imagination it would sell. For the gullible, this was another occasion for a bully politician to ride on deception. The gullible probably swallowed, without chewing, the forced emotions.
The man wept during his 11th year in public office for the suffering schoolchildren from the other side of Nairobi City County. That the governor should weep during the beginning of his second decade in political office is a mark of slow understanding of the harsh realities of the other Kenya.
Sakaja wept during the launch of the Nairobi County School Feeding Programme in Roysambu – a place that once was referred to as ‘Royal Suburbs’. The county, under his governorship, intends to build 10 kitchens in 10 weeks to feed hungry pupils.
The political carrot is named ‘Dishi na County’. The county administration intends to spend Sh800 million to buy lunch for learners in public primary schools. Pupils from informal schools in the slums are excluded from the ‘Dishi na County’ programme.
Those tears show something about the custodian of the Nairobi City County purse. The governor has recently made a budget plan to court success where he says previous regimes let down the children of Nairobi.
Sakaja blames successive regimes for the deplorable state of public schools. But he has been a central cog of those regimes for 11 years.
The governor was a nominated MP during the first term of President Uhuru Kenyatta. There is no record of the MP speaking in Parliament about the state of city schools. There is no record of any Bill he tabled to help improve the lot of the suffering pupils in Nairobi public schools.
