The requirement that MCAs, MNAs and senators be holders of university degrees should be scrapped as it would not serve any meaningful purpose.
According to ODM chairman and Suba South MP John Mbadi, legislators without university degrees are clueless about what is required of them and only report to sign for their allowances without contributing in debates.
But barely a week after Mbadi made these remarks, Mzalendo Trust — tracks the performance of MPs — presented a different reality. The majority of the MPs who never uttered a word in the two chambers of Parliament are degree holders, some of them with multiple degrees from highly rated universities abroad.
Mzalendo, which seeks to promote public participation in law making, oversight and representation functions of Parliament, said some 34 MPs never contributed in Parliament last year, 31 of them in the National Assembly and three in the Senate.
Kanu chairman and Baringo Senator Gideon Moi has appeared in two consecutive years as one of the senators who never speaks in the chamber. Others are senators Victor Prengei (nominated) and Phillip Mpaayei (Kajiado).
Gideon attended some of the best educational institutions, from Saint Mary’s School that was strictly a preserve of children of Kenya’s colonial masters, to Strathmore University (1977-80) before crowning it all at the University of Salford in the UK between 1979-84.
Prengei holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Maseno University and a Master of Business Management with a bias in Strategic Management from Jkuat
Mpaayei holds a pre-university diploma from Oshide Sarkar Institute of Advanced Technology and a degree from Shivaji University, one of the oldest and premier Universities in India.
These facts do not seem to support Mbadi’s claim that leadership is all about one’s level of education. It is one thing to be educated and another altogether to be learned, and those who are learned appear to be doing better than those who are educated in Parliament.
Recently, the country mourned former Kibwezi MP and assistant Minister Kalembe Ndile. Almost every Kenyan knew who Kalembe was, and the constituency he represented. Despite his limited education, he learned to articulate the concerns of the people he represented in Parliament. It is during his tenure as Kibwezi MP that people got to know that the majority of his voters were squatters.
And he did everything he could to successfully address their plight. Today, one who lives outside Kibwezi may have to google to establish the identities of those who took over from him after he lost the seat in 2007.
My guess is that they are by far more educated than him but do not just seem as capable of articulating the problems of Kibwezi East and West constituencies that Kalembe represented as one expansive electoral unit between 2003 and 2007.
Some of the dumb legislators have sought to defend themselves that they are more effective “on the ground”, as if they were elected to make laws in the constituency, represent voters and oversight the Executive from where they were elected! They are fraudsters who do not deserve another chance.
Article 94 of the Constitution defines legislative authority as derived from the people and vested and exercised at the national level by Parliament. It goes on to state that Parliament manifests the diversity of the nation, represents the will of the people, and exercises their sovereignty.
That diversity must be of the most educated like Prof Kithure Kindiki and the least educated but most learned like Kalembe for, as Article 1 of the Constitution provides, “all sovereign power belongs to the people of Kenya and shall be exercised only in accordance with the Constitution”.
Suba Churchill is the presiding convener of the Civil Society Reference Group, [email protected]
