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A heavily accented lecturer at Eldoret University was recently captured by a student telling his multi-ethnic class that if they don’t vote for the sitting president, they should go back to their ancestral homes.
Eldoret, he told them, is no place for tribes that do not support the incumbent. Remember during the ethnic clashes following a disputed election, Eldoret and its vicinity were the centre of some of the worst atrocities, including the murder of scores of people, burned while taking refuge in a church.
The lecturer’s comments came hot on the heels of another clip showing a certain MP (his academic credentials have been questioned) saying ‘his people’, when they get to positions of power, should only employ their kith and kin from their community.
If a candidate happens to be from the Kikuyu tribe, however good he is, they should fail in the interview, if he is lucky to have been invited, in the first place. “This particular candidate did not have the demeanour that is required for this particular position, and he has therefore failed,” said the MP.
However, if the candidate happens to come from the ‘right’ tribe, then the job would be his, however dumb the character is. “The panellists have discovered that this is the candidate this institution was looking for. He has therefore passed the interview,” according to the gospel of MP Didmus Baraza.
My biggest concern is, if this is the thinking of a sitting, elected member of parliament, or a lecturer as I have mentioned above, what, pray, does the average person in the village think? With this kind of incitement, it would not come as a surprise if neighbours took up arms against each other.
This is the kind of ethnic incitement that can quickly mutate into ethnic cleansing. It is pretty clear that the thinking of such an individual – supposedly well educated – permeates to the villager whose entire body has been itching to get rid of his neighbour simply because he has healthier-looking cows and sheep.
We cannot afford a repeat of the murderous ethnic clashes that almost brought this country to its knees a couple of years back.
In Rwanda, you cannot even mention the name of either of the two largest tribes because it evokes memories of the genocide there that killed an estimated one million people. You will go to jail. It is as simple as that.
But here in Kenya, before someone is prosecuted for such incitement, Jesus will have come back and taken all his people.
The biggest catastrophe facing this country is the failure of institutions supposed to ensure the law is followed, regardless of that person’s position in society. We shouldn’t have one law for commoners and another for the elite.
We have a body known as the National Cohesion and Integration Commission. This Barasa fellow was summoned to give a statement to the commission, but we all know that nothing will come of it. It’s a charade to cool the temperatures while investigations will drag on for another couple of years. I ask myself: what other investigation is required other than simply listening to the clip that has gone viral?
What will be the fate of the lecturer who threatens his students with expulsion from the university simply because the students are drawn from a community that he believes is not supportive of the incumbent president?
Some of these constitutional bodies are good for nothing. They are like the mongrel that barks at intruders while running for cover under the cow shed.
They are all bark and no bite. They exist merely by name. And they have a huge workforce and a fine budget for, among other things, tea and scones for the man in the corner office who sees and hears no evil. Such institutions are a waste of money if they need to investigate utterances made on national television.
-The writer is a communications consultant
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