By TEE NGUGI

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Picture this. Uasin Gishu County officials sit smugly facing a crowd of angry parents and their children. The pompousness of the officials oozes from their body language.

The agitated crowd wants to know what happened to funds meant for their children’s university education in Finland and other countries.

The poor parents have sold nearly everything in their possession to get the money, which they trustingly put under the custodianship of the county government of Uasin Gishu under former Governor Jackson Mandago.

Mr Mandago is now that county’s senator, oversighting the newly elected county government.

Hehe. You can laugh too, dear reader, at this comical, if tragic, travesty of the principle of “checks and balances.”

Read: NGUGI: Failure to end graft is Africa’s leadership curse

“Where is our money,” the parents and children ask. The attitude of the fat cats, who include Senator Mandago, is that of someone to whom a great injustice has been done. How dare you ask us about your money?

One girl tells the officials off and dares them to kill her. Even at her young age, she knows that demanding justice from officials can be a deadly undertaking. If you doubt this, ask the families of youth shot dead during the recent countrywide demonstrations against rising poverty. Or go back into history and read about what happened to people who called out the government on its thievery and lies.

We Kenyans have a big problem of hypocrisy. When police in America killed an unarmed Black American, Kenyans unanimously fulminated on social media. But when Kenya police shoot dead dozens of unarmed citizens, we bury our faces in the leisure pages of newspapers. Better still, we distract ourselves with gossip or grouse about racism.

We refuse to confront police brutality here. We refuse to acknowledge our rabid tribalism and sexism. We only see corruption perpetrated by people from other communities. We refuse to address injurious instances of mockery of democracy like a former governor being elected to oversight a county over which he once presided.

It turns out that the tuition money was withdrawn during the last election.

Read: NGUGI: The ills bedevilling Kenya are caused by pious fraudsters

Fat cats used children’s tuition money to fund their campaigns. Many people following this latest heist are angry and despairing.

They ask: What can’t our officials steal? They steal Covid funds meant for the sick and dying; they steal money meant for struggling farmers; they steal funds meant for the National Youth Service; they steal our future by colluding with cartels to release contaminated foodstuff into the market.

Where is the bottom line in this downward spiral?

The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission says it is going to charge several people with the tuition funds heist. But I’m sure only the small fish will fry. The big fish will swim free.

In the unlikely event that the sharks get jailed, they can count on being pardoned in the near future.

Instead of aspiring to be like South Korea, we aspire to become a banana republic.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator