This is turning out to be the Year of the Locust. It is also the year of the global pandemic known as the coronavirus.
Must it also be the year when we Kenyans commit the folly of holding a referendum at a time when the country cannot afford it, and everyone knows this fact except, apparently, those pushing for an extravagant, self-serving and divisive political adventure with an obsession that defies logic? As almost everyone has acknowledged, the country’s economy is in an extremely parlous state.
We have been living way beyond our means and even our decision-making number crunchers have run out of arguments to convince Kenyans that all is well and soon there will be real money with real purchasing power in their pockets if only they can be more patient.
We are deeply indebted and ways of extricating ourselves from this mess are dwindling by the day. To make matters worse, we know what really ails us – runaway corruption, poor sense of priorities in matters of development, acute joblessness among the youth, precipitate capital flight, anaemic agricultural and manufacturing sectors, an education system that badly needs re-fixing, and an intractable insecurity problem.
To cap it all, there is this inexplicable fixation with politics because some individuals who are already in powerful positions have their eyes firmly fixed on the future, which to them does not go beyond 2022 when they aim to grab power by hook or by crook.
It is unbelievable that at a time when the locust invasion menace, which threatens the country’s already fragile food security situation, has hit us below the belt, so to speak, all many people are only talking about are the sideshows that might entertain them during the next BBI meeting.
Will Moses Kuria be given a seat at the dais or be ejected again? Will Kipchumba Murkomen be allowed to speak freely or will he stage another walkout?
Will the rest of the Tangatanga brigade modify their opposition to BBI and dance themselves lame like their counterparts in Kieleweke? Will Prophet Francis Atwoli again predict who won’t be Kenya’s president, or will he persist on giving jobs to people who are already gainfully employed?
One would think that in his position, he should be addressing the plight of workers who are being laid off in droves.
This country, like many others in the continent, was caught flat-footed by the locust invasion, which has already taken a grim toll on its agricultural production.
This has happened in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea. To make matters worse, there is a possibility that a second wave of locusts will hit the same countries again before April as their eggs hatch.
Luckily, scientists are now on the game and have found ways to monitor where the eggs are likely to hatch, and destroy them with chemicals.
Countries outside the continent with huge populations like India, Pakistan, Iran and China have also been affected. This latter country, which seems to be particularly unfortunate this year, has been mulling a novel way of dealing with the pests – sending 100,000 ducks to Pakistan to eat the insects.
It is a pity the idea didn’t work out considering that since we seem to import everything else from that part of the world, we could have done the same with the birds.
On top of that, this country, like many others in the world, faces a catastrophic plague that has the potential to wipe out millions of people before it can be contained and a cure found, or at least some vaccine that would help prevent contraction, discovered.
By the latest count, at least 3,286 deaths from Coronavirus have been confirmed, 3,000 of them in China alone, while 95,500 cases around the world have already been identified and quarantined.
Of course by the time this article is published, the numbers will have gone much higher.
So far, most countries in Africa have escaped the scourge, and there are all manner of speculations why this should be so, ranging from the totally unscientific – that the virus does not like warm or temperate climate – but there is no saying whether this will be the case in the next few weeks or even days.
However, the point here is that most of these countries, Kenya included, were ill-prepared for an affliction of this magnitude. Whatever the case, these are the things that we should be focusing on, not succession politics.
Nobody is saying that reggae must stop. However, we do need to halt the beat for a while and think of the more urgent problems this country faces and how to address them.
It therefore came as a pleasant surprise this week when it was revealed that Parliament failed – whether by design or not – to set aside in the budget the billions of shillings needed to administer a referendum this year.
Perhaps it dawned on them at last that there is no money to spare for such a task immediately, however necessary it may be.
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