I do not know what music genre tickles [IEBC chairman] Wafula Chebukati’s fancy but if the good man is reading this article, I would humbly request him to take some time and listen to It Wasn’t Me by Shaggy.
In that song, the musician has been caught red-handed by the girlfriend while having a tryst with the girl next door. Shaggy goes to his friend who tells him to follow the rule that has been used by culprits over the years — deny.
This advice would come in handy because if I remember well, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission chairman raised complaints against Deputy President William Ruto and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga over what he termed premature campaigns.
As expected, the two leaders pulled a Shaggy on Chebukati, denying they were campaigning. As far as the two former allies-turned-foes are concerned, they are doing nothing illegal.
Only traveling around the country to let Kenyans know of their bottom-up and Azimio la Umoja clarion calls. If this is not campaigning, then I should go back to my high school and demand a refund from my teacher of English.
Talking of teachers and schools, Kiharu MP Ndindi Nyoro seems to have been well inspired to build new institutions of learning in the former Nyanza province.
Now we all remember the ever smiling Nyoro comes from the neighbourhood of the late Kenneth Matiba, the man who gave Kenyans the slogan ‘Kuuga na Gwika’, Gikuyu for ‘Saying and Doing'.
Now it happens that last weekend, Raila took his Azimio la Umoja gospel to Nyeri county, where he was endorsed to run for president by a group of elders. The women counterparts of the elders were not left behind as they gave Ida Odinga a new name, Nyawira, which I am told means a hard working woman.
Now Nyoro, a dyed-in-the-wool Ruto fanatic, was not amused in the least with the happenings in Nyeri. He challenged Raila and his Mt Kenya supporters to drum up support from the local community instead of importing crowds from far away in Nyanza.
This is where the development-conscious Nyoro came in strongly to build schools. The MP said the Raila rallies' supporters were so desperate for crowds that they hired buses from Nyalenda High School, Kondele Boys, Siaya High School and Homa Bay Girls, among others, to ferry supporters to Nyeri.
I tried Googling the exact location of these schools but my search came up empty. But I know how government organisations in the country have been ganging up against the bottom-up people (at least according to them). And so I would not be surprised if the folks at Google followed suit and refused to give me this info as it would have served to further bottom-up’s interests.
However, my enquiries with folks coming from around the places where the schools are supposed to be also yielded no results. They do not exist in the physical but only in the fertile imagination of Nyoro.
But imaginations can do wonders and if you are doubting, just try to follow the riveting story that took place at the hitherto most secure prison in Kenya, the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison.
That's where three high-value convicts took a stroll to freedom in a move that left security nabobs scratching their heads in frustrations and the Prisons boss Wycliffe Ogalo jobless.
Were it not for the bravery of police reservists in far away Kitui county and a top notch coordination headed by Interior CS Fred Matiang’I and PS Karanja Kibicho, the three miscreants would have made their way to Somalia.
Consequently, they would have definitely planned and executed more dastardly attacks against innocent Kenyans.
Rounding off, kindly spare a thought for South African scientists. Working hard on their microscopes, these ladies and gentlemen discovered and alerted the world of a new variant of the Covid-19, which they named Omicron.
In a fair world, you would have expected a deluge of kudos to drown the South African medics. However as Kenyans would tell you, ‘kwa ground vitu ni different’. Within hours of the announcement, the developed world was leading in giving the South Africans the leper’s treatment.
The UK, Germany, the US and other Western countries rushed to slap flight bans on South Africa and six of its neighbouring countries. Talk of being damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
(Edited by V. Graham)
