It would be safe to say that Kenya has turned a corner as far as politics is concerned when our Supreme court decided to have a re-election. In Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba’s words, there seems to be an introduction of “hygiene” into our Kenyan politics and judiciary. Hygiene in our politics and judiciary is the condition that has been lacking in this country for the longest time. It was lacking during the time of our father Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, it was lacking during the reign of Daniel Arap Moi, then Mwai Kibaki and now during Uhuru Kenyatta.
The reason why it has been lacking for so long is because we chose to build our country based on tribes. Since our forefathers and even up to today, we value a person’s tribe more than their character. Just like Martin Luther King Jr. believed that for America to be a great, it had to judge people based on the person’s character rather than the color of their skin. I submit to you now that for our beloved Kenya to be great, we must judge people based on the content of their character and not on their tribal affiliations.
There is an African proverb that says “Unity is strength. Division is weakness”. Our country’s potential has not been exploited for almost sixty years because we divided ourselves into smaller communities rather than bring everyone together into one community. But all this can change if we choose to judge our leaders and each other based on character rather than the tribe. The vision of Kenya 2030 will not be achieved for as long as tribalism and corruption are the rulers of our everyday life. Kenya will not be the middle-income country which provides a high quality of life to all its citizens in a clean and secure environment if we allow tribalism and corruption to rule our everyday decisions and govern our thinking.
But for us to rectify these two main problems namely tribalism and corruption, we’ve got to address the deeper issues such as morals, ethics and principles in our society. These two problems have sprouted wings because we forgot or ignored the importance of morals and principles in our society. A lot of the problems in our society today, apart from the tribalism and corruption, were all caused because of diluting the importance of morals and principles such as integrity, responsibility, honesty, truthfulness, transparency etc. Once these principles could be bent, it opened the doors to a society whereby corruption and tribalism was the norm in everyday life.
This catastrophic disease seems to have spread like a cancer to the very heart of our nation. These problems are found not just here in Kenya but in all other African countries and our societies are the ones which pay the price. But for us to change our nation we must first start by taking a closer look at ourselves and making the necessary adjustments to ourselves first. In doing this, we will be ensuring that Kenya has a better future and it all starts with us. And our first big test will come on Tuesday 17th October 2017 when we return to the ballot boxes to choose the fate of our nation for the next five years.