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For a man purported to have been wading through mud coordinating rescue efforts after last Friday’s deluge that turned Nairobi into a sinking hole, Governor Johnson Sakaja appeared too glam when he spoke on TV on Sunday night.
His beards were trimmed, his white shirt was starchily pressed, his light brown leather shoes were polished; his hair was oiled and combed. Put simply, he had the swag of a man venturing out on a Sunday night.
Then he sat on the famous Bench on the TV set to deliver a well-choreographed mishmash of nonsense. I have used this salty vocabulary in place of kizungu mingi, like a compendium of inanities, because there were contestations if Sakaja completed his degree, and I don’t want to open old wounds.
In his lengthy diatribe that bordered on the absurd, I would say Sakaja’s explanations were surface-level, like the depth of his dimples. He said Nairobi was swamped simply because it’s a swamp that has water beneath and above it.
For avoidance of doubt, he invoked his own childhood, in this very city, when the land was flooded, and little Sakaja made it home well after midnight. He did not state when he had started his long trek home, nor whether he swam or flew home because of the deluge. Neither could we infer the moral of the story.
They say God works in miraculous ways, but now Kenyans got a glimpse of why the kanjoras in Nairobi had plotted Sakaja’s ouster last year on claims of incompetence, a move that was halted when the late Raila Odinga reined in his troops. Now it’s Prezzo Bill Ruto who has come to rescue. Or is it? I heard he’s been dangling some cash to Sakaja if the county administration relinquishes some functions to the national government.
I don’t know where the idea of the national government as a competent entity comes from; one just needs to look at our roads or healthcare systems to understand why they work as they do, and that’s a mild way of putting it. As they say, a drowning man clutches at a straw, which is precisely what Sakaja did last Sunday. He blamed everything and everyone else for the city’s flooding, other than himself. Bure kabisa.
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For a man purported to have been wading through mud coordinating rescue efforts after last Friday’s deluge that turned Nairobi into a sinking hole, Governor Johnson Sakaja appeared too glam when he spoke on TV on Sunday night.
His beards were trimmed, his white shirt was starchily pressed, his light brown leather shoes were polished; his hair was oiled and combed. Put simply, he had the swag of a man venturing out on a Sunday night.
Then he sat on the famous Bench on the TV set to deliver a well-choreographed mishmash of nonsense. I have used this salty vocabulary in place of kizungu mingi, like a compendium of inanities, because there were contestations if Sakaja completed his degree, and I don’t want to open old wounds.
In his lengthy diatribe that bordered on the absurd, I would say Sakaja’s explanations were surface-level, like the depth of his dimples. He said Nairobi was swamped simply because it’s a swamp that has water beneath and above it.
For avoidance of doubt, he invoked his own childhood, in this very city, when the land was flooded, and little Sakaja made it home well after midnight. He did not state when he had started his long trek home, nor whether he swam or flew home because of the deluge. Neither could we infer the moral of the story.
They say God works in miraculous ways, but now Kenyans got a glimpse of why the kanjoras in Nairobi had plotted Sakaja’s ouster last year on claims of incompetence, a move that was halted when the late Raila Odinga reined in his troops. Now it’s Prezzo Bill Ruto who has come to rescue. Or is it? I heard he’s been dangling some cash to Sakaja if the county administration relinquishes some functions to the national government.
I don’t know where the idea of the national government as a competent entity comes from; one just needs to look at our roads or healthcare systems to understand why they work as they do, and that’s a mild way of putting it. As they say, a drowning man clutches at a straw, which is precisely what Sakaja did last Sunday. He blamed everything and everyone else for the city’s flooding, other than himself. Bure kabisa.
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By Peter Kimani