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I listened to former DP Rigathi Gachagua the other day and agreed with him. A public loan taken in the name of all Kenyans must never be dressed in party colours.
This is not ideological: it is constitutional, moral, democratic, and foundational to citizenship. Public resources belong equally to all, regardless of party, tribe, region, or voting history. Once national funds become partisan tools, the state stops being a republic and becomes a campaign machine.
We are witnessing this with the NYOTA Fund. Announced as a national youth empowerment programme financed through billions borrowed from the World Bank, it is morphing into something else: a rolling political mobilisation fund for 2027.
In Coast disbursements especially, but increasingly nationwide, access seems mediated not by eligibility, need, or merit, but by political proximity; not by policy, but by rally presence; not by citizenship, but by loyalty. This is not governance; it is debt-fuelled patronage.
Every Kenyan, whether they chant UDA slogans, attend rallies, or vote for the government or not, will repay this loan through taxes, levies, inflation, austerity, reduced social spending, and future budgets.
The burden will fall on hawkers in Kisumu, teachers in Meru, fisherfolk in Lamu, boda boda riders in Bungoma, traders in Gikomba, farmers in Kitui, and unborn students. Turning such a loan into a partisan spectacle is not merely unethical. It is fraudulent. Public borrowing carries a sacred trust: leaders must maximise public good, minimise waste, and protect intergenerational equity with scarce, costly resources.
Debt should fund development, infrastructure, productivity, education, healthcare, jobs, not political theatre. When borrowed money becomes campaign currency, the social contract is violated twice: debt without development, and development without fairness. Name it honestly: the conversion of sovereign debt into electoral infrastructure.
We replace roads with loyalty networks, institutions with party machinery, empowerment with conditioning, productivity with optics, and governing with campaigning using money borrowed in the name of the very people being excluded. This is not merely about NYOTA.
It signals a deeper shift in Kenyan politics: the normalisation of partisan statehood; the erasure of the boundary between government and party; the conversion of public programmes into campaign assets; the weaponisation of service delivery; the instrumentalisation of poverty.
Healthy democracies compete on ideas, performance, and trust. Captured democracies train citizens to vote for access to funds, tenders, bursaries, food relief, jobs, or loans, turning citizenship into dependency and democracy into transaction. Accountability is replaced by gratitude politics: people beg for inclusion; leaders distribute.
Debt-funded patronage is economically reckless. It yields neither sustainable growth nor productivity; it strengthens no institutions, reduces no inequality, creates no durable jobs, attracts no investment, fixes no health systems, and improves no education. It postpones the crisis and deepens it while exhausting fiscal space.
We are borrowing from the future to buy applause in the present. Politicisation corrodes trust: selective resources destroy belief in fairness, merit, institutions, and the state, until governance collapses into suspicion, resentment, and disengagement. Yet we are watching a World Bank facility morph into a mobilisation platform.
Let us pause on the symbolism: a youth-entrepreneur fund becomes a stage for party regalia; a national programme becomes a political roadshow; public debt becomes campaign seed capital; development becomes choreography; policy becomes theatre; governance becomes optics; citizenship becomes conditional.
Silence is not neutrality. Silence is consent: fail to object, and we normalise partisan capture; tolerate loans as loyalty tools, and we license it; accept politicised service delivery, and we institutionalise it; allow public debt to become campaign finance, and we destroy the ethical foundations of the republic. A government that borrows in the name of all must govern for all. Anything else is not leadership; it is looting, not only of money, but of trust and the future.
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I listened to former DP Rigathi Gachagua the other day and agreed with him. A public loan taken in the name of all Kenyans must never be dressed in party colours.
This is not ideological: it is constitutional, moral, democratic, and foundational to citizenship. Public resources belong equally to all, regardless of party, tribe, region, or voting history. Once national funds become partisan tools, the state stops being a republic and becomes a campaign machine.
We are witnessing this with the NYOTA Fund. Announced as a national youth empowerment programme financed through billions borrowed from the World Bank, it is morphing into something else: a rolling political mobilisation fund for 2027.
In Coast disbursements especially, but increasingly nationwide, access seems mediated not by eligibility, need, or merit, but by political proximity; not by policy, but by rally presence; not by citizenship, but by loyalty. This is not governance; it is debt-fuelled patronage.
Every Kenyan, whether they chant UDA slogans, attend rallies, or vote for the government or not, will repay this loan through taxes, levies, inflation, austerity, reduced social spending, and future budgets.
The burden will fall on hawkers in Kisumu, teachers in Meru, fisherfolk in Lamu, boda boda riders in Bungoma, traders in Gikomba, farmers in Kitui, and unborn students. Turning such a loan into a partisan spectacle is not merely unethical. It is fraudulent. Public borrowing carries a sacred trust: leaders must maximise public good, minimise waste, and protect intergenerational equity with scarce, costly resources.
Debt should fund development, infrastructure, productivity, education, healthcare, jobs, not political theatre. When borrowed money becomes campaign currency, the social contract is violated twice: debt without development, and development without fairness. Name it honestly: the conversion of sovereign debt into electoral infrastructure.
We replace roads with loyalty networks, institutions with party machinery, empowerment with conditioning, productivity with optics, and governing with campaigning using money borrowed in the name of the very people being excluded. This is not merely about NYOTA.
It signals a deeper shift in Kenyan politics: the normalisation of partisan statehood; the erasure of the boundary between government and party; the conversion of public programmes into campaign assets; the weaponisation of service delivery; the instrumentalisation of poverty.
Healthy democracies compete on ideas, performance, and trust. Captured democracies train citizens to vote for access to funds, tenders, bursaries, food relief, jobs, or loans, turning citizenship into dependency and democracy into transaction. Accountability is replaced by gratitude politics: people beg for inclusion; leaders distribute.
Debt-funded patronage is economically reckless. It yields neither sustainable growth nor productivity; it strengthens no institutions, reduces no inequality, creates no durable jobs, attracts no investment, fixes no health systems, and improves no education. It postpones the crisis and deepens it while exhausting fiscal space.
We are borrowing from the future to buy applause in the present. Politicisation corrodes trust: selective resources destroy belief in fairness, merit, institutions, and the state, until governance collapses into suspicion, resentment, and disengagement. Yet we are watching a World Bank facility morph into a mobilisation platform.
Let us pause on the symbolism: a youth-entrepreneur fund becomes a stage for party regalia; a national programme becomes a political roadshow; public debt becomes campaign seed capital; development becomes choreography; policy becomes theatre; governance becomes optics; citizenship becomes conditional.
Silence is not neutrality. Silence is consent: fail to object, and we normalise partisan capture; tolerate loans as loyalty tools, and we license it; accept politicised service delivery, and we institutionalise it; allow public debt to become campaign finance, and we destroy the ethical foundations of the republic. A government that borrows in the name of all must govern for all. Anything else is not leadership; it is looting, not only of money, but of trust and the future.
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By Gitobu Imanyara