We have enough issues to deal with here as Kenyans living in the diaspora. We have families here and even more of our family members at home.
You have to work hard to get a job and keep that job and go for necessary training to get somewhere. We have bills to pay starting with your rent or mortgage to keep a roof over the heads of our families.
Often we watch in despair as political crooks often try to destroy our country and that has been happening for decades regardless of who is in power. Some of us are out here because we fled from our country as refugees after years of being imprisoned and tortured by our government.
Personally I had to go on foot to Musoma in Tanzania and later made it to Canada when the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) moved us from Tanzania because some Kenyans in Tanzania as refugees had been grabbed by Kenya police and shipped back to Kenya and jailed.
Whatever brings us out here we have never stopped not just assisting our families at home but also fighting by every means possible to help build the free and economically strong country that all Kenyans demand and deserve.
We beg our politicians not to export their tribalism to Kenyan communities outside the country because here we are one community. When I came out here the first thing was to get a place to live and soon we realized none of us could afford rent for a house by themselves.
We grouped and lived together and in my place there was a Kikuyu friend of us from University days and we also had immigrants from other countries and we live together so we could afford our place and then look for jobs and live independently when you are ready.
The last thing we need and expect from our politicians however important they think they are is to come here and divide us into tribes which we left at home and then lecture us on what to do with our money. The government of Kenya does not give us any money. What we earn out here by working everyday sometimes even during the weekends including Sundays is for us and our families both here and at home.
Kenyans out here do not send money to the government. We send whatever little we have to our family members mostly for basic needs and we feel obliged and lucky to be able to do that.
Of course the money comes in foreign currencies and that helps the government because they pay the people we send money to in Kenyan currency and keep the dollars and other foreign currencies.
Just today before I woke up my nephew was on the phone calling to let me know he got the money we sent him the day before but things had changed. We sent the money to help the guy who is in charge of things down there to pay the water bill and do more Kayaba trees along the fence because we have been doing that and now we like it so he wanted to put it all around the houses down there.
Then the KLPC came over and they have to fix electricity so he used the money we had sent and paid what he could afford but he needed a whole lot more to buy electric poles and all that stuff .
He told me if we don’t do it after the power workers came we are going to wait for months for them to come back. So we had to fix that today and that really helps because we are just outside a big and growing town and we can rent out what we have and that means the electricity system has to be fixed for people to want to live there.
Now the water bill and Kayaba plan had to wait but my nephews at home told me they are going to fix that. Basically they were telling me to do the electricity business because they want it done.
Then a few days ago I was talking to my aunt who is the youngest in my mother’s family and she can be very funny. When I am home she never forgets to remind me that she was my babysitter and how she helped me to walk and do all things I needed.
So when she calls me I am a happy guy because I get to know how she is doing and now she is also helping her grandchildren to go through college and I have to help her with that. Luckily for me I always remember what my mother told him when I went home the first time from Canada. She said: “You are not there for yourself” as she pointed to my sisters all of whom are younger than me. You can never forget that from your mother. You have to try the best you can.
My aunt told me when I was a little boy I would give my mother headaches because I was sometimes boycotting the food because I want something else and she was the one who helped me. When she was telling all these stories when my son was still young and she was making him know I was also in that stage years back and my sisters would just laugh all over the place because the old guy was being told how messy he was.
As for my uncles they are a different story. Those wazees don’t call you and they don’t expect you to call them. They just don’t do the cellphone business. They wait for you to come home and then you go see them and sit down because it is going to be a good long talk.
They want you to be responsible because they tell me if I am not responsible how can I expect the young ones to do things. The young ones will just say the big one is over there in Canada and he is doing nothing. So me I am usually very patient with my uncles from my mother’s side and from my father too.
In terms of investing in our country there is no need to repeat what we have said so many times to our politicians who think that remittances are for investment. That is change money for food to feed our families.
The African Diaspora Network Gives Africans Living Abroad A Pathway To Invest At Home,
The African Diaspora Investment Symposium. Global remittances to Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) grew by 10% to $46B in 2018 (the last year for which there is complete data from the World Bank)
When eventually we have a Kenyan government that understands what investment from Kenyans in diaspora means we will have that discussion. Now it would be a complete waste of time.
But I will give one example out here with Filipino Canadians where their government allows then to have industrial investment back home and they buy equipment and send those home with no excise duty taxation at the port of entry and they are building big things down there and even here in Canada because of the income they are able to generate back home.
In the US Mexicans who are allowed by their government to bring industrial products home for investment without taxation at the border own big industries in their country. Same with Mexicans here in Canada. They invest at home because their government understands they can get access to industrial equipment down here.
To do industrial investment you need to go to the bank where you live and work to get a loan and sort things out because when you have a job here you can get that loan. We do not go to the banks here to get money for remittances. It is from your pay. When our government some time in future will realize the value of industrial investments from Kenyans in diaspora we will have that discussion and make things work for Kenyans at home and in diaspora.
As for Presidential Candidate to be, Mr. Rigathi Gachagua, my advice to him is to stop trying to divide Kenyans at home and those out here into tribes which can generate conflicts between people who have the same destiny as a nation. Kenyans are smart people and they will not buy into that. Here we are a community of Kenyans and we help each other. Gachagua cannot change that reality which is very healthy for us and for the country.
When I hear Gachagua telling Kenyans in the US that President Ruto is fighting our Kikuyu brothers and sisters who are as much Kenyan as anybody else in Kenya, I know he is lying. And when Gachagua tells people that Ruto is fighting to deny Kikuyu communities the right to live well and make money like everybody else he is telling a big lie.
That is because the first thing President Ruto did after he took office in August 2022 was to make the same Gachagua who was his DP a billionaire. I am sure Gachagua was a Kikuyu man on November 10, 2022 when Ruto allowed him to walk away with billions of money he stole from the Kenyan taxpayers after the corruption case against him was withdrawn.
Gachagua’s corruption charges withdrawal was done by the then DPP Noordin Haji with instructions from the president to terminate a case which the EACC had brought to court against Gachagua with regard to theft of public money in 2021.
DPP withdraws Sh7.3 billion fraud charges against Gachagua
Nov. 10, 2022
As was reported by the media then, Senior Principal Victor Wakumile ruled on an application by the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) Noordin Haji to withdraw the Sh7.3b graft case against Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua and nine others.
“There being no objection to the substantive application by the prosecution to have the matter withdrawn under section 87A of the Criminal Procedure Code, the application is hereby granted,” said Wakumile.
Magistrate Victor Wakumile told the lucky criminals being freed from huge theft of public money that “The accused persons are hereby warned and informed that they may be re-arrested in the future under the same or similar charges,”
The DPP highlighted a lack of evidence in his application and blamed the DCI for the failure to complete investigations.
Senior Counsel Kioko Kilukumi who was representing Gachagua presented a nonsensical defense for the theft of this huge amount of money with a statement which made it very clear that the orders to withdraw the case came from William Ruto’s State House.
“Without completing the investigations the first accused [Gachagua] was arrested on Friday, July 23, 2021, at 3 am in Mathira, Nyeri County. Why would a police officer be in anybody’s residence at 3 am?” Kilukumi posed.
“After the arrest, Gachagua was subjected to intense humiliation, driven at neck-break speed from Nyeri to DCI headquarters. He was at DCI at 9 am but was not presented in court until 26 July 2021,” he added.
.That was the “defense” for the DP Rigathi Gachagua and accordingly DPP Haji withdrew the case.
A
This was the time the DPP Noordin Haji was Gachagua’s best friend and they were having a good time until June 25, 2024 when Gachagua went bonkers against the same guy who by that time was the Director General of National Intelligence Services (NIS) and there was a fight between the two which actually went to the courts.
On June 26, 2024 the day after Gen Z activists went on a demonstration at Parliament Buildings demanding that Finance Bill 2024/25 be withdrawn because it was going to make the cost of living very high for Kenyans, Gachagua started a fight against Haji.
Gachagua as DP was furious about the demonstrations and he accused Noordin Haji of ineptitude in his role as the head of intelligence by failing to advise President William Ruto that the majority of Kenyans were opposed to the Finance Bill 2024.
DP Gachagua referred to Haji as a former junior officer at the NIS and was mad and demanded that the NIS boss must quit his job immediately.
“Had the National Intelligence Service briefed the President two months ago about how the people feel about the Finance Bill, 2024, so many Kenyans would not have died, property would not have been destroyed, offices would not have been destroyed. There would have been no mayhem, but they slept on the job.” said the DP.
One big question for Rigathi Gachagua is, when he was receiving Sh. 7.3b from William Ruto, was the president a friend of the Kikuyus at that time?
What happened since then other than the fact that he is no longer the DP and not getting big money from his boss.
Today Gachagua and his friends in the United Opposition cannot stop shouting about corruption in Kenya and public money being drained making the government unable to provide basic services like free primary school education.
When Rigathi Gachagua the new anti-corruption King in the opposition was collecting Sh. 7.3 b of taxpayers money which actually could provide a lot of help to the Kenyan public it was okay and William Ruto was Gachagua’s hero at that time. What gives.
One more very disturbing reality is that as DP, Gachagua was mad with the then NIS boss for not letting President Ruto know that Kenyans were angry with the Finance Bill 2024/25 so that the president could control the situation and deal with the demonstrations.
Today the same Gachagua is riding a hot rod on the same demonstrations which he pretends to be a big champion of while just a year ago as DP he could not stand demonstrations against Finance Bill 2024/25. What gives.
One thing is clear. Kenyans have a demagogic presidential hopeful for whom facts and telling the truth means absolutely nothing. Kenyans can see that and it is the reason why even the United Opposition team knows that with this liar and tribalist as their candidate against President Ruto it will be a walkover for TUTAM.
