The 100-member national steering committee and national multi-sectoral forum on youth engagement proposed by President William Ruto on Saturday will, like its many predecessors, consume billions of yaxpayers' money only to produce unacceptable, undesired, unsuitable and impractical results.
Ruto and his government should not forget that they are the instigators of the current crisis and thus have no basis or moral high ground to dictate the terms of engagement.
So instead of forming another doomed committee, we the Kenyan youth are ready to organise ourselves and in our own ways and means, form our own interim assemblies, organisations, associations, movements and interest groups – online and offline – and come up with petitions of demands and proposals to Ruto's regime.
We can then physically present within three weeks our written petitions directly to Ruto at his Harambee House office and have him personally receive and stamp them as envisaged in Article 37 of our constitution. The petitions should then be published in a special public portal, complete with an implementation tracker.
This, fellow Kenyans, is the only way to avoid another valueless spree of spending taxpayers' money on another doomed national committee. Many opportunistic individuals, actors, groups and formations within and outside government are already salivating for what is undoubtedly set to be another profiteering opportunity under the pretext of the proposed committee and forum.
We must not forget that more than 30 Kenyan youths have paid the ultimate price with their lives to bring us to this revolutionary moment. Nearly 200 others are in hospital beds nursing injuries sustained in the last two weeks of national anti-Finance Bill, 2024 and anti-government protests across Kenya.
This therefore should be a solemn moment of sincere, far-reaching, substantive and inclusive national reflection and deliberation for Kenya by Kenyan youth and Kenyans in general, not a politicised moment.
Patriotic Kenyan youth