There are six elderly ladies in the village for whom I have been paying monthly NHIF contributions for some time now, including my mother. Since anything that requires one to remember monthly deadlines can be quite tricky, I often pay several months in advance for each, because the cut-off date is the ninth of each month, before the contribution goes into arrears and attracts a penalty.
It has been a relatively peaceful process for many years. Through the old NHIF pay bill number 200222, I would make these payments, get an instant confirmation, before I dialled their USSD code to check the status of each contributor. They were all instantly updated, with the last month of the advance contributions. For all intents and purposes, this was a functioning process and there was no need to reinvent the wheel or “fix” what wasn’t broken.
But you can trust the Kenya Kwanza regime to bring disorder where there is none. Smart alecks in the regime decided that payments for all government services would henceforth be channeled through a single pay bill number 222222, via the e-Citizen platform. I hope to see the wisdom of this in the future, but I am not holding my breath, because the trial and error method of governance associated with this government means that the shelf life of hope is very short.
Anyway, in late December, early January and early February, I made the regular member contributions for my relatives via e-Citizen. In each case, one wasn’t updated, and in each case, the member was shown as “in arrears”, with a penalty due. I sent emails to NHIF customer care people, who dutifully sent me an e-Citizen “unreflected payments” form each time, which, as you have probably guessed, went one way without a response. In a nutshell, in a short span of six weeks, I had lost Sh3, 000 in contributions to NHIF and the attendant total penalty of Sh750, because I had to follow up with fresh payments alongside the penalties, in order to keep the old ladies covered to avoid inconveniences with any sudden ailments.
I consider myself a relatively enlightened man, with solid networks within the civil service and the political establishment on both sides of the parliamentary divide. On any given day, when I need help with matters that require high-level intervention, I easily find someone in my phonebook to call, who can help. Yet on this robbery by the e-Citizen payment platform, I realised I wasn’t making much headway and worried about the millions of Kenyans who might be experiencing similar issues to mine, with no easy recourse.
You have to wonder: how much of these payments to different institutions remain “unreflected” and what is the impact on the financial and operational bases of the institutions? This is not even the initial question I had in mind. The greater issue is the emerging culture of silence in the face of poor governance, collapsing institutional foundations and an almost universal acceptance within a large section of the population that these hiccups and bouts of misrule are ‘normal’ in this regime, without considering their ultimate cost to the economy and the national fabric.
On Thursday last week, Nairobi senator Edwin Sifuna was on the popular Daybreak morning show on Citizen TV. Before I say anything about the show, I think the Royal Media Services, owners of Citizen TV, should consider supporting a grassroots project of Sifuna’s choice in his Nairobi base, because he has turned the show into the most-watched political conversation in the country, with massive ratings every week.
As fate would have it, Sifuna’s regular sparring partner on the show, Kakamega Senator Boni Khalwale was away bereaved, so Daadab MP Farah Maalim and Tana River Senator Danson Mungatana were unlucky recipients of doses of acid from Sifuna’s vitriolic tongue. The debate brought to the fore part of the problem of governance in the country; elected leaders who see no evil and hear no evil. Throughout the show, Maalim and Mungatana were more concerned with “showing respect to the President”, than with the public interest issues being discussed.
To begin with, Maalim quoted a non-existent law banning same sex relationships, to which Sifuna educated him by letting him know that the penal code criminalises “carnal knowledge against the order of nature”, which essentially includes even heterosexual relationships that violate this order of nature. I cite this particular anecdote only to demonstrate that regime apologists often assume that their actions and words have the backing of the law, without actually knowing or reading the law.
Which is to say that the tripod on which impunity stands and thrives encompasses the already stated culture of silence, the philosophy of ignorance of the law and declining numbers of firebrand politicians speaking out on behalf of the people. Some quarters have questioned the Nairobi Senator’s abrasive methods. Indeed, the two ‘elders’ appearing with him on that Thursday show consistently asked him to go slow on them. But the truth is that the purveyors of poor governance, regardless of their age or office, already lose respect for themselves by peddling lies and false hope to the masses.
I am reminded about the perennial debate over which freedom icon, Martin Luther King Jnr and Malcolm X was more effective in the movement. King’s moderate, non-violent methods versus Malcolm’s radical and abrasive style. Sifuna’s style is probably a touch of both, but what most people may see as being rude to authority and to self-styled elders is, in fact, impatience with systems that don’t work and state incompetence. Indeed, during the 30th death anniversary prayers for freedom icon, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, presiding Bishop at St Stephen’s Cathedral in Kisumu, declared, “This country needs more elected leaders like Edwin Sifuna.”
Radicals and firebrand politicians largely undertook the second liberation. It was a necessity from the realisation that then President Moi and his regime wouldn’t understand any other language. The Ruto regime, in many ways, reminds one of the Moi government, with its entrenched incompetence, allegations of corruption within it and its affinity for endless promises to the people that never were fulfilled.
If second liberation warriors had approached Moi and his government politely in the 80s and 90s, speaking in deference to the elders and begging for constitutional freedoms, both multi-party democracy and free speech would still be a faraway dream today. It turns out, liberty is not a favour for which you kneel before dictators, begging for your piece, like scraps of sliced potatoes.
This is why the third liberation, which now boasts firebrands like Sifuna, requires a new cast that takes up from where the second one left off. Unfortunately, political expediency and a weak ‘stomach infrastructure’ has led many elected leaders into money settlements through which they auction their mandate to the highest bidder. Effectively, as firebrands become fewer and fewer, the wiggle room for impunity and misrule has become bigger and bigger. Courage is rare to come by. The Nairobi Senator finds himself in a lonely fight, but one in which he has no luxury of retreat or surrender. Principles in politics and leadership are now alien. Which explains why I am paying penalties to contributions I have already sent to NHIF, which got lost somewhere, but no one will speak up for my people!
The writer is a political commentator