Kenyans are supposed to have a president running the country from State House but it seems William Ruto wants to change all that in a hurry and give his God the keys to State House. To solve all the problems Kenyans face, specifically with the economy.
When campaigning for the elections, William Ruto told Kenyans he is going to reduce the price of all basic commodities as soon as he takes office. Not once did he tell us that God was going to do all the work for him. Mr. Bwana Asifiwe needs to get a clue about what it means to govern the country.
Some of the stuff the president and his preachers were talking about is kind of scary and crazy. Ruto asked the clergy to speak in tongues while walking at State House. Even my mother who was a devout Christian like nobody else I have seen would laugh her head off if someone asked her to speak in tongues to clean a place. She never believed in such weird aspects of any religion.
People need their tongues to eat some affordable food before they can burst into strange speech with words they have no clue about.
“Please don’t leave after lunch. Speak a word of blessing in this compound. Those who can speak in tongues speak around this compound. We will ask the senior clergy to pray over this residence,” Ruto said.
“I’ll ask 30 to 40 members of the clergy to pray over this building. To you all, don’t be in a hurry to leave. Walk around State House as you pray in tongues. Let everyone know that we are finally here,” he added.
Bishop Mark Kariuki who led the Thanksgiving service said they will pray over State House until all the hiding evil forces are driven out.
“You’ve heard the President inviting us to walk all over this place to purify it. When we walk around State House, we’ll declare this ground purified. Any evil altar that may have been raised here will be paralysed in the name of Jesus Christ. We are more than 40 preachers,” he said.
It is one thing for Rachel Ruto to claim that she prayed really hard in their old house and God purified the water in their house and completely a different storytelling for millions of Kenyans that the same God is going to be throwing food at them and giving them cheap fuel.
That can’t be bottoms-up which Ruto promised because we all know that God does not live at the bottom of anything. This is all the way from heaven which is as high up as you can get.
One thing Kenyans know for a fact is that the real God in the supply of Unga and other goods are those who produce those goods and most of them probably never go to church. They determine the prices for their products.
The government can sing and pray at State House 24/7 and that will not affect the prices the producers demand for their goods.
As William Ruto was unraveling God’s plan in State House, his deputy Rigathi Gachagua was telling Kenyans that the land grabbing business called the Shamba system, banned by President Kibaki in 2003 will be fully revived and people will be allowed to invade the Kenyan forests and gazetted lands to do farming. I guess this is their big plan to bring the price of unga down.
The real issue here is that it is the rich people like Gachagua, his boss Ruto and others who will grab big chunks of forest land using all sorts of proxies and companies and make huge profits destroying our forests like they did before the Kibaki government stopped them.
As we all know the shamba system was one of Moi’s big ideas to rob public land and it was only abolished after Moi was defeated in 2002. Now the Moi little prince called Ruto want to revive that to do the same things Moi was doing with Kenyan forests.
“Farming in gazetted forests is land grab, full stop,” said lawyer Ahmednasir Abdullahi great supporter of Ruto during the campaigns. It is beginning to rain on them too.
While making the announcement Saturday at a funeral service in Baringo, Gachagua said the reintroduction of the shamba system will increase food production in the country.
Renowned environmentalist the late Wangari Maathai was against the shamba system.
She said the system had been abused as farmers were allowed to turn large sections of indigenous forests into farmlands leading to the destruction of local biodiversity and greatly reduced the capacity of the forests to be effective water reservoirs.
There are those saying some of the gazetted lands have no trees. Then we should plant trees there and that could provide an excellent job for all these youth groups who want work. Give them that job and they will get funding from the government as well as international environmental groups.
If Ruto allows farming in those lands, what we will see is exactly what Wangari Maathai said which was, people were invading areas with indigenous forests cutting down the trees and it is declared a farming area.
Then I saw something truly bewildering:
Ruto needs to sit down with his government key figures and develop serious policies that can actually improve the lives of Kenyans instead of all the haphazard announcements from him and Gachagua. Most of which makes no sense whatsoever.
One of the things you need to do to help the economy is to have a sane and sober government where things are thought through and developed as viable economic plans and then implemented.
God will never do that even for his beloved Mr. Bwana Asifiwe. God has more urgent things to do I suspect.
Adongo Ogony is a Human Rights Activist and a Writer who lives in Toronto, Canada
