A snapshot of how various ministries could not account for money allocated to them was reflected in the Controller and Auditor General’s report for the 2009/2010 financial year tabled in Parliament in July 2011. The Kenya National Audit office (KENAO) reported that five ministries could not account for a total of KSh6.4 billion. They were:
• KSh3.6 billion – Ministry of Health (Minister Beth Mugo)
• KSh889 million – Ministry of Roads (Minister Franklin Bett)
• KSh743 million – Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Minister Moses Wetangula)
• KSh662 million – Ministry of Internal Security and Provincial Administration (Minister George Saitoti)
• KSh408 million – Ministry of Special Programs (then under Minister Naomi Shaaban)
The Controller and Auditor General Anthony Simon Gatumbu, noted in his report that: “During the year under review various ministries submitted for audit accounts which were inaccurate. Many such appropriation accounts had errors and reflected balances which did not reconcile with those shown in their ledgers.”
In a Standard newspaper compilation of figures by James Anyanzwa and Macharia Kamau (July 7, 2011), other ministries that could not explain their missing millions were:
• KSh196 million – Ministry of Lands (Minister James Orengo)
• KSh59 million – Prime Minister’s Office (Raila Odinga)
• KSh92 million – Ministry of Agriculture (then under Minister William Ruto)
• KSh59 million – Ministry of Information and Communications (Minister Samuel Poghisio)
• KSh28 million – Ministry of Public Works (Minister Chris Obure)
• KSh10 million – Ministry of Finance (Minister Uhuru Kenyatta)
• KSh89 million – Ministry of Industrialization (then under suspended Minister Henry Kosgey)
Ministers are the principle heads of their ministries and would normally be asked to take political responsibility in unexplained cash losses. Permanent Secretaries are the accounting officers, yet could not answer why those billions were missing. It was also revealed that documents presented for auditing did not match with claimed expenditures, thereby casting doubt on the authenticity of disbursements.
Irregularities in government accounts seem quite normal as reflected in past reports by the National audit office. For instance, in the 2007/2008 fiscal year, KSh489 billion was not accounted for, while in 2008/2009, the amount was KSh215 billion. There were discrepancies in “records of revenues received by Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) and what was actually received by the Treasury.” In addition, revenues banked at the Central Bank did not match with KRA records. As usual, some ministers dismissed the Auditor-General’s report, arguing that they had no losses to account for.
KESSP forensic audit
A forensic audit of KESSP was conducted by the Ministry of Finance with technical assistance from UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) between April and September 2010. The aim was to know how FPE money was used during four financial years from July 2005 to June 2009. Findings: Ineligible expenditure was reduced from the originally suspected loss of KSh8.2 billion to KSh4.2 billion. Claims of expenditure on physical infrastructure brought a loss of Ksh1.9 billion because visits to such schools revealed that no money was disbursed. Instead, the audit revealed a trail of refunded cash to schools’ bank accounts which were then withdrawn for private use. An amount of Ksh8.2 million could not be accounted for on claims of imprests.
A total of KSh2.27 billion was not reconcilable with the Education ministry’s cash books or bank account balances. There were attempts to cover up the discrepancy but the money trail is available. Details of bank accounts, disbursement of cash to wrong accounts and irregular payments are also available. Further, there were details of money being sent from the Ministry of Education yet not being received by targeted schools. Although Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta noted in the Audit report that the loss of around KSh4.2 billion was just one per cent of the total amount of Ksh489 billion that was disbursed to KESSP from 2005-2009, this money could have done a lot to improve the program.
The Ministry of Finance recommended legal action against all parties involved in the theft. However, since the delivery of a press statement on the final audit of KESSP on June 13, 2011, nobody has been prosecuted. Calls to dismiss the Minister for Education Professor Sam Ongeri have fallen on deaf ears because he enjoys full political support from Kibaki.
Joy Karamesi of USBEC wrote: “In September 2009, the World Bank announced that it had suspended funding to the Kenya Education Sector Support Programme (KESP), of which it was providing US$ 80 million (KShs. 6 billion). In December 2009, the UK suspended their education aid to Kenya. This was followed by the United States of America early in 2009 which suspended about $7 million (Kshs. 532 million) in funding to Kenya’s Primary Education Program. These suspensions were as a result of allegations of fraud. No funding has been disbursed from the donor community since the Kenyan government announced discovery of fraud in September 2009.
Minister refuses to resign, officers not prosecuted
There were several calls from civil society activists, then-Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC), a section of MPs and Prime Minister Odinga (whose docket includes the supervision of all ministries) for Education minister Sam Ongeri to resign. However, he vowed to stay put. In a Nation newspaper article by Barnabas Bii on June 29, 2011, Prof Ongeri was quoted saying that: “I cannot compromise my political responsibility by resigning as a minister.” He also mentioned that he never dealt with cash but paper work. Ongeri then absolved himself from the cash theft claiming that he was not the responsible minister from 2005-2008.
Interestingly, he also said that: “About 1.5 million children could not access free primary education due to factors ranging from financial constraints to lack of learning materials. About 200,000 children in arid and semi-arid areas are not benefiting from formal education.” As the overall boss in the ministry, what has Ongeri done to ensure such children are taken care of in the FPE program? What are his ministry’s officials doing to ensure that these poor children go to school? What about their MPs who are patrons of the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) which could facilitate their schooling?
Prime Minister Raila Odinga announced the suspension of Ongeri for three months in February 2010, to pave way for investigations in his ministry. However, Ongeri dismissed the order by asking why Raila did not resign because of the maize scandal which had implicated top employees in his office. Before the audit report revealing a loss of KSh4.2 billion in the Education ministry, there were already 18 cases involving prior scams pending in court. President Kibaki also dismissed Raila’s suspension and urged Ongeri to continue working, evidence that Kibaki, the President of the Republic, is one of the most important figures who have been supporting impunity in Kenya.
The mainstream and social media have covered the FPE mega-scandal extensively. During a visit by Ongeri to Kisii area where he hails from, the Standard Group recorded a video in which he admitted diverting money. Available on Youtube (posted February 13, 2010), the video captured Ongeri speaking in Ekegusii (his mother-tongue) saying he could only be accused of correcting the difference in money allocated to Nyanza province for infrastructural development which was KSh1.123 billion, yet Kisii area received KSh188 million only. He had therefore increased the allocation to improve his people’s well-being. This is further evidence that Kenya is a Banana republic managed by Ministers who draw government policy in their respective sitting rooms! Ongeri also said that if his officers were found guilty of misappropriating the FPE money, then he would resign. Emphasizing certain points in mother-tongue is typical of embattled Kenyan politicians, when seeking sympathy and support from their “tribespeople”.
Ongeri is still Minister for education regardless of the damning audit report that also called for the prosecution of involved officers. Some members of the Kisii community staged street protests to support him, claiming “our person” was being targeted by his political detractors. What about president Kibaki who initiated FPE? Nobody takes his boring directives of “dealing with graft” seriously and after all, Ongeri belongs to his Party of National Unity (PNU); he will weather the storm. The audit report recommended too, that former Education Permanent Secretary Professor Karega Mutahi should take responsibility for the loss of the FPE money, since he was in charge then.
Results of an investigation by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) in October 2011 on the FPE grand scandal, recommended that only administrative action should be taken against a few officers in the ministry. This means transfers, surcharges and demotions. Procedurally, Treasury should have handed their forensic audit report first to then-Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (now Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission) for action. However, Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta side-stepped the Commission and handed it to the CID. If the Director of Public Prosecutions upholds the CID recommendations, then more than 100 top officials at the Education ministry will escape court trials. To be continued in Part 4.
Jared Odero
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Agony of attending school from an IDP camp
By WANJIRU MACHARIA and GERALD ANDAE
Posted Tuesday, December 27 2011
Pupils who sat the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education exams at IDP camps are not excited as results are released on Wednesday morning.
This is not just because they do not expect to pass the test they wrote under difficult conditions, but because their guardians may not afford fees for secondary school — leave alone buying the long list of items required of new students.
Those who spoke to the Nation at the densely populated Pipeline IDP Camp in Nakuru were sure to get above the pass mark of 250 out of the 500 marks and like any other child their age, had big expectations.
Some want to be engineers, doctors, nurses and pilots. One of them even said she would want to be in the battlefront in the army, a profession that is hardly mentioned in the wish-lists of most candidates. Benson Mwangi Githinji, an orphan who lost his father in the post-election violence and whose mother died several months later while at the Nakuru ASK Showground, says that he is sure of passing the exams, but his grandmother does not have the capacity to take him through secondary education.
Care of grandmother
“My five siblings and I were left in the care of my grandmother. Three of my elders are still in secondary through God’s grace and I wish I could get a sponsor or bursary like them,” he said on Tuesday.
Mwangi said a well-wisher bought him a bicycle which he rides 14 kilometres to Lenana Primary School and another 14 kilometres back in the evening along the Nakuru-Nairobi Highway.
“I have had problems since we were ejected from our home in Molo during the violence. My father was killed during the fighting, while my mum followed him several months later,” he says.
He went on: “I never went for tuition because my grandmother could not pay and neither could I study at home because the environment is not conducive; we are the six of us in a small, poorly lit tent.”
Mwangi says he often went to school without breakfast or after just a cup of porridge, and would not eat again till evening since he had not paid for lunch at the school.
A similar story is told by twins Grace Wanjiku Mwaura and Rahab Wahu Mwaura and their brother, Geoffrey Kimani Mwaura, who all sat the KCPE exams at Nairobi Road Primary School in Nakuru.
Their mother is jobless while their father who lives in Nairobi depends on menial jobs.
“Unlike primary school education, which we know is completely free, secondary school is only subsidised, and I am not sure my parents can afford that,” Wanjiku said.
She and her siblings are also sure that they will pass the exams and would prefer to be absorbed in boarding school to escape the poor living conditions at the camps.
Wanjiku, who wants to join the army, adds that unlike at the camps where they are not able to study, at the boarding school the environment would be conducive to learning and that they would be able to compete at the same level with their colleagues from middle-class families.
In Uasin Gishu District, Lilian Wanjiru and two of her classmates sat in pensive mood under a tree yesterday, listening to the 1 o’clock news at the Naka Camp for IDPs.
They do not usually converge for the news, but yesterday, they were expecting any updates on the results of KCPE expected on Wednesday morning.
“I have to be kept abreast of all the updates about the results that they will be releasing tomorrow,” Lilian said.
The former pupil of Gateway Primary School, Uasin Gishu, is among the 750,000 pupils who sat for KCPE last year.
Though Lilian sat for same examination as other Kenyan pupils, she was taught in a difficult learning environment.
Lilian had to wake up everyday from the inconveniences that come with the life in the tent as opposed to her counterparts who had to wake up from the comforts of their bed.
“The government needs to come up with a perfect criterion that will work in our favour because there was no equity between pupils who woke up from tents and those who came from their homes,” she said.But the irony of it all, as Lilian explained to the Nation, is that the same cut-off mark will be used to determine the secondary school that they will be allowed to join.
Lilian, 14, says that the cut-off mark for internally displaced people should be lowered owing to the hard studying conditions they encountered in the camps.
Lilian selected Moi Girls High School as her first choice and believes that though she might not raise the required marks to join the prestigious North Rift giant school, if the government intervenes and lowers the cut-off point, then her dreams might come true.
She expects to score 350 marks and above and notes that if she were studying in a good environment, she would have expected to score even higher.
Camp problems, she notes, include lack of space in the tent to carry out studies. Increased price of kerosene, she added, also dealt a blow to her efforts to study.
Sell relief food
Another candidate, Grace Murugi, said that the problems they faced in the IDP camp were enormous, and that the government needed to intervene during the selection of schools to reduce the cut-off point of pupils.
“I expect to score 300 marks and above, but the government should not lock me out of a national school given the condition that we studied under,” Grace says.
Her mother, Ms Anna Gakenia, says that she had to sell relief food given to them by donors to raise the exam registration fee for her daughter.
“I would opt that we stay hungry rather than see my daughter stay home owing to lack of school fees,” Ms Gakenia said.
Isaac Mwangi also sat the KCPE exams at Gateway Primary School this year, and like two of his colleagues, also stays in the camp.
Isaac had to go for manual work to raise the money required at the school, and missed many classes.
“My mum has no work and we needed to raise money for exam registration and tuition.
“I was not left with an alternative other than manual work,” he says. Isaac expects to score at least 300 marks.
UNRESOLVED SCANDALS IN KENYA
1. GOLDENBERG( STILL PENDING) IN BILLIONS OF US$
2.ANGLO LEASING
3. US$1.5 billion dollar money laundering fraud by Charter House Bank Ltd.
4. GRAND REGENCY
5.The 2009 Triton Oil scandal
6. banking fraud scam worth $1.5bn involving money laundering and tax evasion
SECURITY CONTRACTS CORRUPTION SCANDALS IN MILLIONS OF US DOLLARS (Mostly on Kibaki’s watch)
Listed in Githongo’s dossier[19] are a number of companies that won security-related contracts through corrupt deals:-
Payee Purpose Amount (millions)
Anglo Leasing Forensic LAB – CID USD 54.56
PS-Internal Security OP 16 August 2001
Silverson Establishment Security Vehicles USD 90
PS-Internal Security OP 16 August 2001
Apex Finance Police Security USD 30 PS-Treasury
PS-Internal Security OP 9 February 2002
LBA Systems Security-MET USD 35 PS-Treasury 7 June 2002
Apex Finance Police Security USD 31.8 PS-Treasury
PS-Internal Security OP 14 June 2002
Universal Satspace Satellite Services USD 28.11 PS-Treasury
PS-Transport 11 July 2002
First Mechantile Police Security USD 11.8 PS-Treasury
PS-Transport 11 July 2002
Apex Finance Corp Police Security USD 12.8 PS-Treasury
PS-Internal Security OP 12 July 2002
LBA Systems Prison security USD 29.7 PS-Treasury 19 November 2002
Nedemar Security USD 36.9 PS-Treasury
PS-Transport 19 November 2002
Midland Bank Police security USD 49.65 PS-Treasury 29 May 2003
Naviga Capital Oceanographic vessel EUR 26.6 PS-Treasury 15 July 2003
Empressa Oceanographic vessel EUR 15 PS-Treasury 15 July 2003
Euromarine Oceanographic vessel EUR 10.4 PS-Treasury 15 July 2003
Infotalent Police security EUR 59.7 PS-Treasury
PS-Internal Security OP 19 November 2003
Apex Finance Corp Police security EUR 40 PS-Treasury
PS-Internal Security OP 17 December 2003
Ciaria Systems Inc Design, maintain satellite NSIS USD 44.56 PS Treasury
Director NSIS 20 January 2004
FPE is a failure because today’s KCPE results show that private primary schools have the best performance in the whole country. The worst are in public schools offering the so-called free education.
With the theft supported by Minister Ongeri who is a Kisii, it is weird that Kisii and Nyamira counties have recorded the worst KCPE results among private schools. Public schools have equally been ranked poorly. The results were announced by Ongeri himself, the supporter of FPE theft.
Kenyan kids are subjected to ‘sheng’ which interfers with formal English and KIswahili in school. POOR quality of education in Kibaki’s system!
Osewe, I appreciate reading your blog but often get surprised when some commentators focus on petty and personal attacks instead of responding to serious topics. Why is it so? Could it be that the Nordic cold has diluted their capacity to think?There are more responses to nonsensical topics than those that challenge the intellect.I think gossip sells more!
KSB: Here at KSB, we blend serious topics with juicy human interest stories to enable both the elites and the intellectually challenged to ventilate. We find this strategy democratic. The motto is simple. “Discuss a topic or gossip”. You could also just wait for a storo to attack your enemy. Sadly, that is how KSB is organized and the KSB people like it that way. To test your popularity here, tell Wakenya to unite or suggest that the comments section be closed. You can also try to know what people think about you by supporting Ambassador Purity Muhindi. We will soon throw something “juicy” to end the year after serious stuff about FPE is done. For now, all eyes on Jared.
20 reasons why President Kibaki’s Government should be overthrown by Kenyans
By: Martin Ngatia
“Since the President has lost the support of Kenyans he had when he took over power, the decisive question is whether the masses can be mobilized to rebel against his regime regardless of the outcome of the referendum”
When we proposed last week that the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) should prepare the masses psychologically for Kibaki’s exit from power, it was not because of any personal hatred of the President.
The truth is that the election of Mwai Kibaki as President of Kenya was an accident because Kenyans wanted to remove former dictator Daniel arap Moi from power regardless of who took over from Moi. The view was that there could be no progress in the democratic struggle with Moi at the helm because of harsh conditions the former President had imposed on Kenyans.
Current events in Kenya clearly indicate that Kibaki has served his purpose and his continued stay in power is now more of a political liability because he is driving the Nation backwards. Our perspective that Kibaki should be overthrown through democratic means available is based on the premise that he will lose to the Orange movement on November 21st and if he doesn’t quit after this defeat, there will be a serious political crisis in Kenya that could plunge the nation into total chaos.
The Narc government is split and in the event of an Orange victory, the regime will not function, political tensions will rise while Kibaki and his henchmen will simply be struggling to hang on to power against a rising mass movement against the government. While we welcome the call by members of the Orange Movement for a snap general election regardless of the outcome of the referendum, we wish to strengthen the case for Kibaki’s quick exit because Kenya needs a new leadership after the Narc disaster. We wish to outline some of Kibaki’s major mistakes which dictates that he should go.
CONSTITUTION: After failing to deliver a Constitution 100 days after coming to power, Kibaki hijacked a “people’s driven Constitution” drafted at Bomas which he proceeded to mutilate through his lackeys in Parliament. Kenyans are now being asked to vote for a Constitution that will extend dictatorship and authoritarianism in the country indefinitely. This is unacceptable after Kenyans witnessed the making of a dictator during Moi’s 24 years in power.
MEMORANDUM: Kibaki’s official nickname since his days as Moi’s Vice President is “General Kiguoya” which means “General coward.” The President’s conmanship and open deception saw him dump the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) agreed upon by his political allies before elections, a move responsible for the current split in the Narc government. The MoU fiasco is evidence that Kenya has a President who cannot be trusted.
TRIBALISM: Although Kenyans thought that they had elected a new President, the person who seized power was a “photocopy of Moi.” Just like his former boss, Kibaki has filled the government with members of his Kikuyu ethnic group, a move that, in essence, promotes a vice hated the most by millions of Kenyans – tribalism. With Kibaki in power, the fight against tribalism has been ditched until he departs. Kibaki is a tribalist and advising him to stop tribalism is like advising a vampire to stop sucking blood. It will never happen!
CORRUPTION: Institutionalized corruption was one major reason why Moi lost power. After seizing the State machine, cases of corruption scandals in the media have been chocking Kenyans like fish bones stuck in the esophagus. The latest is a case of corrupt Generals sending Army helicopters to South Africa for repairs. An old merchant ship was recently purchased and converted into a naval ship in another corrupt deal that exploded in the media. After spending billions of Tax payer’s money on the Goldenberg commission, Kibaki has failed to bring to book thieves in the Goldenberg scandal while during his leadership, Kenyans witnessed the explosion of the Anglo leasing scandal that forcefully brought the issue of rot and corruption in Kibaki’s government to the national arena. The President has refused to prosecute a single thief who has stolen from the tax payer. Even his former anti-corruption boss, John Githongo, quit because he was convinced that Kibaki had lost the will to fight corruption. An estimated Ksh 40 billion has been stolen by Kibaki’s friends since the septuagenarian assumed office. Why should Kibaki continue to remain in power?
WRONG PRIORITIES: While over 2 million Kenyans are facing starvation, Kibaki is planning to build for himself a palace worth Ksh 100 million at Tax payer’s expense. The issue is so real that it was brought before Parliament. Kibaki’s speeches that he is fighting for the interest of Kenyans is therefore sheer propaganda. A leader who plans to build a palace worth millions of money when his people are starving has lost the moral authority to rule. Kibaki must go!
ARREST OF JOURNALISTS: After Narc came to power, the illegal arrest of journalists and attempts to muzzle the media were considered bygones of the Moi era. During the Kibaki Presidency, Kenyans have witnessed with “shock and awe” the return of intimidation, harassment and arrest of journalists doing their job in Kenya. With Kibaki as President, there is no reason to indicate that the situation will change in the future. This is why Kibaki has become a spent force who should be disposed of. A golden opportunity to do this by way of referendum has presented itself and Kenyans must not let this chance slip away. Let the referendum be a vote of no confidence in the government and subsequently a reason for snap elections so that Kibaki can go.
BRIBING VOTERS: A part from direct rigging of elections, former President Moi used to buy and destroy votes especially in opposition strongholds as a way of winning elections. Kibaki is bribing voters with land while Councilors are being enticed with “pay hikes” to vote “Yes” in the coming referendum. The Provincial administration has been rounded up and ordered to campaign for the “Yes” side. State funds are being used in the referendum to support the “Yes” campaigns because Kiraitu Murungi has said that the “Yes” campaign is a “government project.” Are there any other reasons why Kibaki should not be relieved of his duties?
500,000 JOBS: There is nothing as disappointing as promising poor unemployed youth jobs which cannot be delivered. This is exactly what Kibaki did during the campaigns. 11 million unemployed Kenyans were promised 500,000 jobs per year and they believed and voted for Kibaki. Three years down the line, not a single job has been created because the government is unable to invest in construction and industry, the surest way of creating jobs. Promises of better housing for the poor in slum areas have all evaporated. Instead, Kibaki has supported a salary increment of MPs to more that Ksh 500,000 while the President has himself cut a pay package of Ksh 2 million with a monthly “entertainment allowance” of Ksh 200,000. Didn’t some English men say “enough is enough”?
LANDLESSNESS: Land is a sensitive issue in Kenya because millions of Kenyans remain landless more than 4 decades after the Mau Mau freedom fighters took up arms to fight for land. Instead of addressing the issue of landlessness, Kibaki is using the issue of land to blackmail a section of Kenyans in the Rift Valley into voting “Yes” at the referendum. What could be more dirty? This is after these Kenyans were violently evicted from their land by the government which also destroyed millions worth of property. Kibaki needs to go so that pending issues like the land question can be addressed by a new leadership committed to resettling the landless in Kenya.
RULING BY THE MAFIA: There is nothing worse than a whole government being left on the hands of a small Mafia cartel that operates outside the law. The core of Kibaki’s Mafia troupe is composed of Mirugi Kariuki, Chris Murungaru, Kiraitu Murungi, David Mwiraria, John Michuki, Njenga Karume among others. These Kikuyu chauvinists have and continue to behave as though they own Kenya. Our view is that to end the rule by the Mafia, Kibaki must give room!
COMMISSIONS AND TASK FORCES: There is a tactic Moi used to employ to buy time whenever his government was in crisis. It was called “ruling by Commissions and Task forces.” Kibaki set up the Goldenberg commission but then what happened? Leading Commissioners were corrupted, Kibaki failed to act and now nothing tangible has come out of the Commission despite having spent billions of tax payer’s money on it. The Ndungu Land Report has been ditched by Kibaki because too many thieves in the government have been implicated in land scandals including Kibaki himself. The Ouko Commission Report has not been released because of political reasons. Instead, its Chairman Mr. Gor Sungu has been taken to court for trying to get Dr. Ouko’s killers to answer charges. We could go on and on. There is no end to reasons why Kibaki should continue residing in State House!
TEACHERS CHEATED: There are workers in Kenya living on what is called “starvation wages.” This lot includes teachers who were cheated by Kibaki that their pay hikes awarded by Moi in 1998 would be paid after Narc came to power. Teachers voted for Narc “in toto.” To date, this promise has not been honoured, exposing Kibaki as a deceiver of workers who cannot be relied upon. Any promise Kibaki now makes to Kenyans is dismissed as propaganda. How can he continue to remain President when his only listeners are his cronies and fellow ethnic cahauvists?
KIBAKI’S TERM: When he took power, Kibaki promised to step down once his 5 year term of office is over. Still on the point of dishonesty, Kibaki has declared that he will stand for President in 2007, shocking many Kenyans who thought that Kibaki was just a “transition President.” If there is no pressure now for Kibaki to go, we might soon read about Kibaki wanting to become “President for Life.” Honestly speaking, can Kenyans take this kind of hog wash any longer?
ATTACKS ON WORKERS: Kenyans witnessed with amazement when Kibaki sent riot police to brutalize workers who had simply gone on strike to demand for “living wages.” This is what Moi used to do to contain industrial actions. As if that was not enough, Civil servants who decided to go on strike to press for better working conditions and higher wages were sacked by the government. Within a very short period of time, strike actions have been banned and workers intimidated. Kenya, under Kibaki, is one of the most anti-worker government in Africa today. Kibaki should go to pave the way for workers to organize and play a role in the running of the government. This should be the next item on the agenda in a post Kibaki regime.
POLITICAL ASSASSINATION: Professor Odhiambo Mbai, who was chairing the “Devolution of power Committee” during the Conference at Bomas to draft the Constitution Kibaki has mutilated, was assassinated in cold blood. According to video evidence by suspects, members of the ruling class and other Kibaki allies were named as having been behind the assassination. Instead of moving to unearth the truth as to who was responsible, Kibaki arrested the journalist who uncovered the evidence, charged him in court before releasing him due to external pressure. The issue is that political assassinations are back in Kenya under our own Kibaki. What does this say about his future as President?
SHOOT TO KILL ORDERS: The order to police “to shoot suspected criminals on sight” was a past time of former President Moi. John Michuki, Kibaki’s Minister for Internal security, has ordered police to give suspected criminals the same treatment of death. As a consequence, hundreds of Kenyans have been summarily executed by police in the streets. The rise in crime is not due to any “natural urge” of Kenyans to commit crime but due to lack of alternative ways of making a living because the government is bankrupted and cannot create jobs. As police conduct executions in the streets, a former Commissioner of Prisons disclosed that 20 percent of Kenyans languishing in prisons are innocent. Both the police and the army have been unable to intervene after Kenyan ships are hijacked by war lords in stateless Somalia yet the President has been quick to set his security forces to execute Kenyans in the streets for suspected crimes. Kenya needs a new and fresh leadership that can provide lasting security to citizens and steer clear from public executions conducted by State police.
ONE PARTY STATE: In 1982, Kibaki engineered the conversion of Kenya into a one party dictatorship on the eve of the formation of the Kenya Socialist Alliance. After coming to power on a Narc ticket, Kibaki began proposing that Narc’s affiliate parties should dissolve, a proposal that was strongly opposed by Kenyans who saw it as an attempt to erect a new monolithic government in Kenya. The point is that Kibaki has been there for too long and he takes several things for granted. What the President should do is to go into retirement for when will he enjoy his retirement benefits if he is approaching 80 and still wants to cling on to power?
PURCHASE OF JUSTICE: Under Kibaki’s government, the grand son of Lord Delemare, a former colonial master, murdered a Kenyan national in cold blood. There was hope when the murderer was arrested and brought to court but that is where the hope ended. The Attorney General ordered that the murderer be released because there was insufficient evidence to try him. This was despite eye witness account of what happened. The issue here is that justice in Kibaki’s Kenya is being dispensed selectively. The rich are able to buy justice while the poor are incarcerated. Are there any further reasons why Kibaki should not go?
KENYA IS SOLD: For a “developing country” like Kenya, the government needs to have a firm grip on the country’s economy. Instead of increasing government control of major economic activities in Kenya, Kibaki is either allowing multinational companies to take control of the commanding heights of the economy or selling State enterprises to these multinationals under the privatization program. We have a tea industry worth 43.5 billion and out of this, 78 percent is on the hands of foreign companies. The tourism industry is worth Ksh 42 billion and 71 percent is on the hands of foreign companies. We have 43 banks in Kenya and more than 38 are foreign owned. The Stock Exchange is populated with foreign companies. In simpler terms, the country has been sold to foreign interests and Kibaki is doing nothing about this. High prices of consumer commodities precipitated by spiraling inflation has made life impossible for millions of workers, peasants and the unemployed who can hardly put a square meal on the table. It is official that 56 percent of Kenyans are living below the poverty level. With Kibaki as President, Kenyans can only expect further empty promises and further exploitation of workers as poverty increases and the rich continue to get richer.
KIBAKI TOO OLD: Kibaki is a pre-independence politician who has been there for too long. In the process, he has come to assume that Kenya is a large and personal business empire. We refer to 15 years of misrule of first President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta when Kibaki was in government before Kenyans went through another 24 years of Moi’s dictatorship with Kibaki in government for 10 years as Moi’s Vice President.. Even if he was a brilliant and astute politician, it is time for him to call it a day. Kibaki’s advanced age and ill health could be a contributing factor to the current crisis in Kenya.
CONCLUSION: We believe that the overthrow of President Kibaki could be done in a peaceful and democratic manner. Since the President has lost the support of Kenyans he had when he took over power, the decisive question is whether the masses can be mobilized to rebel against his regime regardless of the outcome of the referendum. A sure way to get Kibaki out will be to convince a vast section of workers to down their tools while at the same time mobilizing these workers and and the 11 million strong unemployed youth into the streets with demands for better wages, better working conditions, jobs for the youth, land to the landless and calls for Kibaki to quit. The Orange team is well crafted to fill the power vacuum and to further open the democratic space for revolutionary politics needed to end Neo-colonialism and imperialist domination in our country.
There is no number of police or army that will be able to beat a determined people. Moi failed during the struggle for political pluralism. Governments have been toppled by organized masses the world over. President Kibaki is now a hindrance to Kenya’s democratic struggle and as the defeat of his government in the November referendum appears imminent, this defeat will only advance the struggle in Kenya if it is carried to its logical conclusion of Kibaki’s overthrow from power. From the point of view of KESDEMO, this is the best way forward.
What ails this primary school?
By NYAMBEGA GISESA
Posted Monday, January 9 2012
“What is the plural of the word ‘boy’?”, we asked Standard Eight pupils at Nyakemincha Primary School on the first day of the new term two weeks ago. It was supposed to be a trick to warm our way into their hearts, our version of an ice-breaker.
Well, warm ourselves into their little hearts we did — if the huge smiles on their faces was anything to go by when we posed that question — but, a minute later, no one had volunteered to tell us what the plural of ‘boy’ is.
To break the uncomfortable muteness, a 14-year-old boy eerily said “we don’t know”, and that pronouncement ushered in yet another period of total silence that stunk of shame and pain. (Names have been withheld throughout this story to respect the minors’ privacy).
There were six pupils in the room, shared by class eight and class five learners, and they all stared into nothingness that warm January morning, their faces as blank as the blackboard in front of them.
Nyakemincha, their school, is no different from many others in the area. Classrooms are brick-walled affairs with cemented floors while teachers live in mud houses nearby. The school has electricity and the architecture is reasonable brick-and-mortar. Basically, they are not that badly off in the infrastructure department, so what went wrong here last year?
The 14-year-old who told us they did not know the plural of ‘boy’ managed 183 marks out of 500 in his last Standard Seven exam. The top performer in that class scored a measly 196. Things are bad here.
A general state of dishonour ruled the school when we visited on Opening Day. The attendance was less than 30 pupils, even though teachers told us they expected over 250 children to report to their respective classes.
Of the 30 were new faces transferring to the school after failing to qualify for the next class in their former schools, while others had come in from private ‘academies’ whose KCPE results had been cancelled over exam irregularities.
In the office, the deputy head teacher, Mr Wycliffe Onyancha, slumped in his chair, letting out a long, deliberate sigh as we sought answers to the school’s poor performance.
Being an administrator at Nyakemincha, he says, is not an easy task. There is constant interference from church sponsors who only want their faithful to lead the school. Add that to the “heavily politicised school management committees” that chase away any teachers they do not fancy; clan and family politics and parents too drunk to care for their children and you get a recipe for total disaster.
Before Mr Onyancha and the new headteacher assumed office, the school management committee members had incited students to chase away the then headteacher, Mr David Orina, from the school over poor results and a disagreement over the use of the government’s free education monies.
To show you how dreaded the place is, the new headteacher posted to replace Mr Orina refused to report to Nyakemincha and instead requested education officials to either post him elsewhere as a regular teacher or sack him altogether.
When he reported at the school in 2011, Mr Onyancha told us, he was shocked to find Standard Eight pupils who could barely read and write. There were exam candidates in that class who had repeated three or four times in one class. Others had been chased away from every other school around for poor performance.
Surprisingly, last year’s results didn’t shock the parents. Out of the 25 candidates who sat the exam, the best pupil scored 188 marks, the last 79. The school performed so poorly nationally (it posted a mean score of 119.36) that the next worst performer, Kathukini Primary School of Kitui County, was ahead by a mean of 10 points.
Because it is difficult to judge a school’s performance by a single measure when so many factors determine academic performance, DN2 spent days in the area trying to figure out what went so horribly wrong.
Nyakemincha is located in Nyamira County near Kebirigo town along a dusty stretch where a local administrator is on suspension for dereliction of duty. Teachers said that over 10 of last year’s candidates were “special need cases or emotionally disturbed”.
Some were too angry or too sad to learn and had “a history of grave behavioural problems”. One of them, teachers said, was “a loner who rarely interacted with his classmates”. According to Mr Onyancha, some of the pupils would stay out of class for weeks whenever they were admonished over their bad scores.
One such bad example was a 17-year-old girl who only managed to score above 20 per cent in one subject. When we sought to speak to her, the father shielded her from us, saying there was nothing wrong with his daughter as far as he was concerned, and that all that mattered to him was that she was okay, health-wise.
In another case, a boy who enrolled in class one at age six and left at 19 managed 129 marks in KCPE — after 13 years in school.
In 2010, the school committee considered the pupils as “lost causes”. One of its recommendations was to ask them to stop wasting time with education and instead spend their resources doing something more helpful with their lives. The trouble pupils were promoted to class eight so that they could “at least leave primary school with a certificate”.
“I remember a heated school management committee meeting during which it was agreed that all of these pupils be promoted to Standard Eight so that they could sit their exams and go home to find something better to do with their lives,” recalls Bernard Onduko, a committee member.
“The pupils had also grown tired of learning and told us they just wanted to get their primary school certificates and head off to other callings.”
“In a class of 25, only 10 could correctly write their names without copying. Getting them to score 50 marks in an examination was not easy and we were always the last in zonal exams,” teacher Charles Maronga recalls.
“For last year’s KCPE, teachers photocopied the 2010 exam sheet, wrote each candidate’s name and other details and pinned them on the examination desk. Even with this, others could still not copy their correct details and were asked to do so under supervision after each paper,” a candidate, Evans Mobegi, said.
If there were about 15 “poor ones”, then why did the other 10 “good ones” not perform well? We posed this question to a group of teachers, who reasoned that the poor ones must have pulled down the performance of the rest “just as a bad fruit spoils the rest”.
But a number of the “good ones” we spoke to blame the poor performance on shoddy syllabus coverage. They said the school timetable was rarely followed and that, by the time they were sitting the examinations, only the English syllabus had been covered.
Teachers often chased each other out of classrooms for coming at the wrong time or coming late and eating into to the next lesson, they said.
By October 2011, the Standard Eight syllabus was partly covered, the pupils claimed. “We did not even learn Geometry and Algebra,” one of them said.
One science teacher, alleged a former pupil, rarely kept time and, when he eventually found his way into class, used most of the time to regale students with stories about his school days. This pupil scored seven per cent in science, and only two candidates scored 30 per cent and above in that subject.