Gachagua Slams School Placement System, Questions Elite Admissions
The big news for the opposition today is that their boss Rigathi Gachagua wants schools like Alliance High School turned into tribal high schools where only local students from the area are admitted.
Gachagua has criticized the government over senior secondary school placements. He said the system is broken. He said it is unfair. He said parents are confused and frustrated.
Gachagua spoke on Sunday at AIPCA Kiratina Church in Githunguri, Kiambu County, he questioned why students from outside Mt. Kenya were admitted to elite schools.
Gachagua named Alliance High School and Mang’u High School claiming that local students with high grades were sent to lower-ranked schools. According to him, the process lacks fairness and clarity.
“This government is confused,” Gachagua said. He argued that merit no longer guides placement. He added that parents do not know where to turn. He warned that confidence in public education is falling.
Gachagua is saying that national schools like Alliance High School and Mang’u should only admit students from the local area and get students only from the communities where they are located.
Apart from his naked tribalism, which every Kenyan knows by now, it is kind of sad that this leader of the United Opposition does not even know what national schools are, how they were established and public resources invested in those schools to make them what they are today.
In Kenya we have national high schools and the system now is that any student from any part of the country can be admitted in those schools if they have the best grades from the exams and if they specifically applied for any particular school.
Just one step below the national schools are provincial high schools which are also very well resourced, and it is the same system to be admitted in one of those.
That is how the system works and if we tribalize the schools which are getting national investments for the whole country to just get students from this or that tribe, we will be killing the entire education system in Kenya.
In my case I was in a small secondary school called Chianda Secondary School in Rarieda and when I went for the exams, I had to make three choices for which high school I wanted to go, and we were told what grades we have to get to be admitted in those schools.
I wanted to make it to the university because my mother was crazy about me going there and her sister who was a nurse in Nairobi told her to push me to work hard in school. The two of them made a plan that as soon as I make it to the university, I will go live with my aunt who is one of the best human beings you could ever meet.
In fact on the day I was admitted at University of Nairobi at the Great Court, I was one of those confused students being led and dragged around by their parents from one table to the next as we registered for all things and in my case, it was my mother pushing me around. She had no clue what I was registering for, but she just wanted to make sure I did everything I was supposed to do then we went back home in South B to her sister’s house.
Before going to the university, my father was agreeable to me going for a training to be a teacher. He told me if I work hard at Maseno Teachers Training College I can graduate and become a teacher in a few years.
But I always loved my mother dearly because she promised me that when she dies, she will go to heaven and even though I was kind of nuts she was going to figure out a way for me to get there instead of going to stay with my friend Obel Sibuth (Big Satan) in hell.
I promised my mother that if I go to hell, I was going to be so nasty there that Obel Sibuth will call the great God on the other side and tell him or her to just get this little man out of hell and then kaboom I would be in heaven.
When the exam time came, I chose Kakamega High School as my first preference, and I was told I needed very high grades to be admitted there. I took the risk and come exam results It was wonderful. When I was riding my father’s bike to get see the exam results, I met my headmaster at Chianda, Oballa Jakinda driving out of school and he stopped so fast when he saw me the vehicle almost flipped.
Jakinda told me I had one the best results in the country and promised to come talk to my father who was his friend because they had to discipline me so many times in my four years at the school. Oh goodness me.
In Kakamega at high school level you take three subjects and decide what you want to study at the university. I chose to go for a Bachelor of Commerce degree and passed and got admitted to the Faculty of Commerce (Accounting Option).
Even after serving ten months in jail after the 1982 coup attempt, I was able to come back to college and graduated in 1984 after which I became a lecturer at Mombasa Polytechnic where I was again arrested or rather kidnapped by Special Branch police and taken to Nyayo House torture chambers and to prison for 15 months. No problem for me as life was going on and the fight for our country was a top agenda for us and the country.
The most amazing experience for me in Kakamega High School was the football team, Green Commandos under the great coach Chris Makokha which was just dominating the high school football at every level. Incidentally years later Chris Makokha became the couch of Kenya national team and did a great job there.
If you look at that picture of Green Commandos in our time, coach Makokha is there but you also see Mike Amwayi who was a young kid when I was there and became one of the best wingers in Kenyan football.
Then you see Peter Lichungu our mid fielder a tall young man. We used to call him Chung Cheng when he was in the field because when that guy had the ball, you have no clue what he was going to do with it, and it was always something amazing.
Lichungu became a very good player in the national team with Mike Amwayi. You also see great Kenyan national team goalkeeper, Bernard Mahinga right there in that Green Commandos team.
That was our squad in high school. It never mattered to us which team we were facing. They were dead on arrival.
My high school was not in my village, but I loved it there and you had to get the grades they accepted to be admitted. That is the way the education system is supposed to work.
At the end of the day, Kenyans know very well about Gachagua’s tribalism, and he is going to kill the entire United Opposition. They will deserve that because the opposition leaders are too scared to stand up to him and stay away from some of the crazy things their Gachagua is talking about like a few days ago when he asked Donald Trump to bomb our country and capture the president. If nobody in the opposition can reject such nonsense and say so publicly then good for them and good for President William Ruto.
If we didn’t know the truth one would think Rigathi Gachagua is actively campaigning to get William Ruto re-elected in 2027 because everything he does undermines any hope of the opposition for which he is holding the umbrella getting any chance of even coming close to give Ruto a genuine contest for the presidency which he thinks is his for the taking.
The one thing that should freak out the opposition is that Gachagua is just starting his tribal rampage on Kenyans and it is going to get really noisy in 2026 as the next election comes close. Gachagua is going to be everywhere abusing other tribes in Kenya and their leaders. He is going to be at every funeral doing his tribal thing and scaring the whole country that Kenya is about to get into a complete tribal political war.
What is Kalonzo Musyoka going to do about that tremor in the country when it unfolds? He will do nothing because he has to worship king Gachagua to have any chance of being the presidential candidate for them.
It is like you are in a car where the driver is mad and drunk swaying the car from one end of the road to the next and you are not getting out of the car because you have no other means of transportation. You know where that will end and Kalonzo knows that right now. Oh poor Steve.
Read: Kenyans Will Listen To and Thank Valentine Wanjiru Githae but Gachagua Will Not
