Do you know why the marines are the best at what they do? Because like good mothers, their leaders eat last.
Marines in leadership positions view it as a responsibility, not an entitlement. They place the needs of their marines before their own.
When it is time for a meal, the call comes out for the lowest rank to line up first.
As if this is not surprising enough, the most senior marines serve their subordinates. But the shocker comes when there is a shortage of food, because those in senior leadership positions are the ones who go without eating.
This is to ensure the physical and mental wellbeing of those in the lower ranks is in prime condition during extreme training or combat.
On the part of those in the lower ranks, what this act of their seniors eating last communicates is that their seniority comes with more responsibilities and that it is the senior’s charged duty to take care of those in the lower ranks and ensure their success.
The current debate back home has been of a different tangent.
The National Assembly in 2016 passed a law that amended Section 22 of the Elections Act that made it mandatory for candidates aspiring to be MPs and MCAs to have a university degree.
The enforcement was deferred to allow those without this requirement to acquire them from recognised academic institutions.
Subsequently, IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati has underscored that without a degree, you will not be qualified to vie for elective office in the upcoming 2022 General Election.
Being the facetious nation that we are, we have two unique identifiers.
One, we do not agree on many things, and two, we are never short of litigants on anything and everything. And as expected, there have been divergent views on the university degree requirement.
Those in support of this law argue that parliamentarians are tasked with legislation and this has implications for the country and the rest of the world.
They contend, therefore, that MPs should be capable of comprehending, reviewing, analysing, critiquing, endorsing and ratifying proposed laws.
And they are of the opinion that a university degree is a magic bullet that will make this happen.
The counterargument has been that it would be unconstitutional because it goes contrary to the Constitution.
Article 38 (3) provides that every adult citizen has the right, without unreasonable restrictions, to be registered as a voter, to vote by secret ballot in any election or referendum, and to be a candidate for public office, or office within a political party of which the citizen is a member and, if elected to hold office.
Others have submitted that the academic requirement amounts to discrimination, becomes a preserve of the elite, and disenfranchises a number of probable good leaders who may not have been privileged to pursue higher education.
Begs the question, ‘what is in a university qualification’? Does it make one a better leader, lawmaker, entrepreneur, employee, patriot or parent?
Like the marine leaders, will a university degree give us leaders that are willing to eat last?
Yet, with or without a university degree, there has been a state-led drive for all of us to vote in a referendum for the BBI, which contains a plethora of proposed laws and policies.
In the spirit of consistency, shouldn’t there have been a requirement that only those with university degrees should be eligible to vote, given that those without the degrees cannot fully comprehend the contents of the BBI well enough to determine its efficacy or not?
I submit that we are using the wrong lens to examine this issue. We have made the case that those without a university degree cannot oversight those with one, neither can they represent and lead many of their electorates that are more educated than they are.
The assumption we have arrived at is that having a university degree gives us better moral, legal, and economic judgement.
I invite us to interrogate this requirement through the lens of our education system. It is not in question that it has a bias towards the signalling model of education.
This model converts education into a race where people trounce their rivals by continuously striving to get a higher qualification to signal to potential employers our elevated intelligence or ability to perform.
It used to be the case that the more educated a person was, the more the likelihood of getting a better job with higher pay.
In pursuit of this conviction, many people have enrolled back to pursue the certification.
Ultimately, this has created more supply than demand and made a mirage of better jobs and higher salaries.
Therefore, to distinguish yourself among the limited number of employers, you strive to acquire an additional qualification.
And the guy next door does the same. To be even more impressive, you obtain the next advanced degree. And he follows suit.
With everybody signalling more, employers then raise their bar, thereby leaving many certified, but unemployed people.
In economic-speak, our signalling model of education has created a negative externality.
This is when a product or the consumption of a good or service exerts a negative effect on a third party independent of the transaction. Allow me to illustrate this.
Our education system is heavily financed by the taxpayer.
This university degree requirement will compel many seeking elective office to enrol back to school if they do not already have the requisite level of education.
This will undoubtedly put an additional strain on the taxpayer, who will not necessarily gain from the aspirant’s acquired education.
And those aspirants that fail to clinch their desired elective posts, will join the ranks of many educated Kenyans who are unable to generate wealth or contribute to national economic growth, regardless of their university degrees.
But more tragic, is the dissonance between the certification acquired and the professional etiquette and character required of leaders.
Have you heard of allegations of MPs taking bribes and succumbing to political parties’ pressure to pass laws a certain way, notwithstanding whether the laws benefit those that they represent or not?
Or of MPs overlapping in traffic, or taking the best front seats in church and public fora?
Or those who enrich themselves first through corruption, at the expense of their electorate? Or those who use their positions and resources to circumvent the rule of the very laws that they create?
This is evidence that our education system does not mould our character for public service, neither will it give us leaders that will formulate laws that benefit the populace.
Unlike the marines, our education system indoctrinates us on rank.
We conform to the notion that success means being number one; being ahead of everyone; eating the best and the finest first; and being exempt from the rules that govern the masses. We default to viewing leadership as an entitlement, rather than a responsibility.
Although as a nation we do not agree on many things, the one thing that is not in dispute is that Ernst and Young is a very reputable accounting and recruiting firm.
They certainly have more collective experience and skills than many of our legislators. So, I believe it is safe to say that we can borrow a leaf from them.
In 2015, they removed the degree requirement as a prerequisite for their hires.
This shift was informed by a study that conclusively found no evidence that success in university was correlated with achievement in professional spaces.
They made a corporate decision that one’s academic performance should not be a barrier for talented and promising individuals.
Undoubtedly, being a good leader is like being a good parent.
The latter puts the lives of their children before their own. Equally, good leaders are those who abandon selfish interest for the advancement of their constituents.
And just like being a good parent is a choice, so is being a good leader. No university degree is a prerequisite to becoming one.
Hence, we need to concede the false dichotomy between a university qualification as a prerequisite to effective representation in parliament.
Finally, my unsolicited advice is to the proponents of this law. Hoping that university-educated politicians will give us better laws, is like hoping a bull will not hit you because you are a vegetarian.
No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and two. Whatever is number three is far behind – Thomas Sowell
