from: Ooko John

First and foremost, following your recent comments, you ought to resign from any public office, direct or through any influential affiliation, NYS or otherwise. That is what every professional worth his salt, and has a love for his nation is expected to do.

Second, are you really ready to take on this rather complex topic of who is actually poor, poor in or poor at what, what exactly that constitutes, and how much of it, you particularly, your tribesman or your tribespeople are evidently culpable of?

Third, do you have what it takes for the ultimate personal sacrifice for the sake of what you deem as your community’s high placement in the Kenyan society? In some delirium quest to portray their tribal base as possessing a self-perceived form of superiority over others in their respective locales, the world has so far given us Adolf Hitler of Germany and the likes of George Wallace in the US. Should we start believing that you are on some self-proclaimed warpath to martyrdom?

Fourth and ironically so, we need a few more twisted minds like yours to help us dismantle this tyranny in our midst. Of course I’m aware that you refer to it occasionally as a different form of tyranny! The history of humanity has shown us that your kind of ebullience is what brought past empires to their knees, the Egyptian not particularly so, but the Roman yes!

Fifth, as for Raila Odinga, he is not a saint! But then again, have you ever wondered as to why the many multi-millionaires dotting the central Kenyan corridor who seamlessly exhibit the same adjectives you casually employed on Raila, have somehow remained obscured to the general Kenyan public? In case you have lived the perceived community privilege for too long, to the extent that its reality has come to be oblivious to you, let me remind you of this fact. It’s all because of the massive state machinery that over the years has, and still operates in that same corridor. Your tribe folks, the poor and derelict especially, have also conveniently overlooked this, simply because the grand economic spill-over effects from that state machinery, has had most of them busy, at least churning a life from its crumbs. Supplementary to all this, is the propaganda mechanism that has effectively rendered meaningless the numerous state scams as the Goldenberg scandal. And so, Raila may be a multi-millionaire living amongst some of the poor in Kenya, but then again, he didn’t create their current status. The state mechanism that has been wielded against some sections of the country from the onset of the Jomo Kenyatta reign did it!

Ah yes, in my desire to relieve you of this rant even though you started it, I almost forgot the sixth item! Have you recently taken a look at the ethnic composition of the Kenyan civil service? Oh my, what am I saying, this composition has been more or less so for decades. In fact, it’s been so since a Luo was the president of Kenya! And the same civil service influence has been used as a gateway to personal business enterprises, those that are being flouted in our faces today as consequences of pure individual efforts of which only the Ngunyi’s are capable of.

By the way (this one has no item number assigned to it), I may have missed it and I intend to learn from you! Was it ever inscribed in some Kenyan Bible that only a Kikuyu would be the governor of the Central Bank of Kenya (of course you know what I mean)? This question is even more significant given that Duncan Ndegwa (a former governor himself), and his commission of 1971 opened the floodgates of our form of corruption (refer back to the sixth item).

Lastly, as a professional, I invite you, – yes, invite you following your implication of having apologized to the Luo community over your recent comments – to read a chapter in my book on the story ofhumanity from an African’s perspective. Well, if you care, you can read the whole book, the full five-hundred plus pages to fully absorb the root meanings of this very letter. Still, the chapter is entitled – Discussing the Kikuyu Factor in Kenyan Politics and Economics. Should you decide to be a sport, drop me a note in the various communication channels as to where you think I’m wrong, as that is expected, but then again, don’t forget to say where you think I’m right , or simply, maybe right!

Yours truly, an electronics engineer and a self-trained political scientist.
Ooko John