Many observers were dismayed by President William Ruto’s campaign tour of the godforsaken parts of Nairobi. On that campaign trail, Mr Ruto made outrageous pronouncements from the rooftop of his car.
He promised residents that he would procure a machine capable of making a million chapatis daily. Then he promised that, in a short period of time, skyscrapers, in the fashion of New York City, would define the skyline of their piece of hell on earth. He promised markets and roads and bridges, and everything under the sun.
Does Mr Ruto plan his speeches beforehand, or does he make them up on the fly, egged on by the excitement of the campaign? Even assuming some of these promises are practically doable, their funding would be unprocedural, because they exist nowhere in the budget statement to parliament.
In any case, government is struggling to pay doctors, teachers and civil servants. Unions representing these sectors have either called for or threatened industrial action.
At the moment, doctors and nurses are on strike and the universal healthcare plan under SHA is not working. This is not the time for campaigning for an election that is two and a half years away.
It is time to sit quietly in an office for countless hours with the best brains in the country to find solutions to these huge problems.
The parts of Nairobi covered by Ruto’s campaign tour are proof of government failure since independence. Basic amenities like water, power, sewerage, roads, clinics, playgrounds are woefully inadequate or nonexistent.
In addition, joblessness, especially among the youth, and crime are sky high. The government should address these shortcomings before attempting to turn slums into New York City.
Once you address these conditions, people will be able to feed themselves and not have to wait for miracle machines to make them chapatis. They will be able to build business premises that, in time, could become skyscrapers.
Mr Ruto’s campaign encapsulated the elements that constitute Africa’s crisis of development. First, it demonstrated haphazard planning, not linked to the overall development plan.
China determines where it wants to be in a hundred years, and plans accordingly. Second, it aptly captured the cause and effect of extreme poverty in Africa.
It showcased how obscene opulence wastes scarce resources. African leaders are beloved of the trappings of power. Mr Ruto’s motorcade snaking through impoverished neighbourhoods recalled Bola Tinubu’s 60-car motorcade going through hellhole of neighbourhoods of a Nigerian city.
Mr Ruto was accompanied on the tour by the governor of Nairobi, a county which recently unveiled garbage as a problem-solving tool. While China is defining the future city, top officials of Nairobi County came on TV to defend their ‘garbage’ strategic plan.
Our intellectuals develop complex theories why Africa has been left behind by the rest of the world. The answer is a lot simpler – “garbage” and pie-in- the-sky, or more aptly, chapatti-in-the-sky planning. Evidence of this kind of “strategic” planning is everywhere in Africa.
Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political and social commentator.
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