The really sad thing about this school is that this is normal in Kenya today in 2022. Those are stone age facilities.
Kenyan politicians send their kids to the best schools which are private institutions and here we have this terrible place where every kid in school is guaranteed complete failure.
Where are the M.Ps for these places? Where are the MCAs and the governors? Where does CDF money go? Every constituency in Kenya gets hundreds of millions in CDF money and we have these kinds of things being called schools.
This is an insult to Kenyans and their children. Look at that school. You wouldn’t want to take your dog in that place and yet we expect our children to learn from there and be productive members of our society.
Right now the biggest issue in Kenya for politicians is about “Sipangwingwi”.
What kind of rubbish is that? Are Kenyans waking up in the morning thinking about that kind of stuff? No. They have more important things to deal with but for the politicians that is the big item on the table where battles for the country will be won or lost.
At some point, Kenyans are going to need to take their country back from the clueless chaps who run and ruin it. The Kenyan public will need to set up their agenda for the country and deal with leaders interested in real problems and real issues for Kenyans.
One of the things that we need to figure out is how can our civil society groups and human rights organizations actually carry out an audit on our schools and look into how CDF is used.
Instead of just talking about elections and violence, which is OK we also need to check how public money is spent in Kenya.
The records are available. CDF money is allocated directly to M.Ps every year. That figure is in our national budgets. As human rights groups, we can pick up that info and the figures. Then follow up at the constituency level to see how the money was used and how effective it is on the ground for Kenyans.
Read: What happens to CDF money in Kenya?
The M.Ps can complain and grumble all they want but they can’t stop credible investigations and inquiries. And once we start unraveling the theft down there, we are going to get a lot of support from other politicians who have inside info and from the public.
In Kenya, in every constituency we are going to launch grassroots accountability teams to investigate everything about public money at the constituency level and at the county level. Politicians will be mad with us but we can build the supports necessary and get international assistance to stop the theft of public money by Kenyan politicians.
That is how we fought them to end torture and abuse of human rights in Kenya. We built networks that the politicians could not stop or control. We have to do the same now to stop the theft of our money and have real development for Kenyans.
CDF is the biggest grassroots investment by the Kenyan government meant, to directly improve the lives and social amenities of Kenyans at their doorsteps. Then the M.Ps just boldly steal that whole budget in front of the whole country and we just do nothing about it and now we talk about some fantasy called bottoms-up.
We already have CDF at the bottom of everything and the M.Ps take all that money and load it in their own pockets. That is their bottoms up development. Take the money for constituency development and put in your back pocket and that is local politicians doing local development. It is a complete fraud.
We can also access the records from the investigations done by the Auditor General’s office where a lot of incriminating information is provided. We get excited when we read the Auditor’s Reports but we forget that the Auditor only provides the report and they have no mandate to do anything else. So our politicians steal all the money, the report comes from the Auditor and we burry it until the next report comes.
Once those reports are released the national government has a responsibility to take action. CDF is national budget money. That money does not belong to M.Ps. Their only job is to help manage the money for the benefit of their constituents.
And we know that for M.Ps the only constituents they care about are their family members and that is why a lot of CDF money goes to accounts run by those same M.Ps and their family members. It is not even complicated theft. It is like that thug who comes to your place, grabs your cattle and they are going with everything.
In March 2022 just before they go out for the election business, Kenyan M.Ps were given Shs. 4.9 billion of CDF money.
Everybody knows where that money will be spent. That is that last batch of pocket money for the M.Ps to buy your vote with Shs. 50. for each voter. You can’t buy even a mandazi with that. But your M.P is probably in Dubai doing some shopping with your money. How is that ever going to work for Kenyans?
And this is what life looks like for Kenyans in Lamu East where people are now fleeing because there is no water there as of this second week of April 2022.
Adongo Ogony is a Human Rights Activist and a Writer who lives in Toronto, Canada
