I have had it.
Just like obscenities and porn, the word 'Government/Serikali" should be banned from the airwaves and any decent conversation. There is no distinct animal, entity, organisation, deity, or whatever called the 'Government/Serikali" with an all-encompassing mandate for everything under the earth. In any political entity such as Kenya, specific mandates are given to specific entities/individuals, not an unidentifiable creature called ‘Government’.
It irritates me to no end when in a day I hear more than 20 references to this word, even from supposedly educated journalists and commentators.
Eti the Government should conserve Mau. Or, the Government should ensure our sugar is safe. The Government should fight corruption. The Government should invest more in fire engines. The Government should buy sanitary pads for girls. Serikali saidia. Tunaomba serikali iingilie… And so on and on ad nauseum.
Niggas, the chief in Wajir and the teacher in Lokichoggio are part of Government. So is the cleaner in Jogoo House and the tea girl in Afya House. In fact, since you pay tax you contribute to the governance of Kenya and are therefore part of Government. Just how do we all ensure sugar is safe, or conserve the Mau? Huu ujinga just goes to show how sloppy 99.76546% of nyeuthis are - they can’t even be bothered to get the right prescriptions to their own problems.
If it is the Mau you want conserved, call on the Conservator of Forests by his real name, the minister in charge, and the forester in Mau (by name!) to do their work. Not an amorphous entity called the ‘Government’. If Gikomba burns, ask Gavana Sonko and his fire chief (nobody knows his name because our brain-dead media would rather say ‘The Government’s disaster preparedness is wanting’ or some shit to that effect) to style up, not the Government.
Using the generic term Government allows mediocrity, corruption and ineptitude to thrive because public servants are not made to take personal responsibility. This, incidentally, is why you see idiots in the grassroots and elsewhere appealing to the president to personally intervene to solve their peculiar problems, as if the president is omnipresent and omnipotent. A strike? Tunaomba president na serikali yetu…Boda bodas out of the CBD? Tunaomba president na serikali yetu…A crisis in KNH? Tunaomba president na serikali yetu…It is as if Kenya has only one public servant, the President.
In more civilised and developed countries, you can go for months without hearing the media make reference to this stupid word ‘Government’. Specific ministers and civil servants are held responsible by name, and petitions and appeals are made to specific offices.
The fact that you nyeuthis continue to perpetuate this silliness of Government/Serikali this and that is evidence enough of what I have always said but will not say again because I know you already know what it is.