Sad story of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Cemetery of Unfulfilled Promises

It feels frustrating to know that politicians are lying to us and there is nothing we can do because their sycophants believe every lie fed to them.

During the Jubilee campaigns in the run up to the 2013 General Election, I vehemently opposed plans to give all Grade 1 pupils in Kenya personal tablets. My thought was that it made more sense constructing a computer laboratory and installing enough desktop computers for use by every pupil in the school.

This would not only ensure that each class gets at least a computer lesson per week, but would also compel the National Government to extend the electricity grid to every public school to power these computers. The Government would be killing several birds with one stone if this is what was implemented from the start of the project.

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The laptop project quickly mutated to a tablet project, then it was shelved in total. Most of the few tablets that were issued have either been stolen, damaged due to mishandling or are used by parents of the beneficiaries to take selfies at social functions as once seen in one presidential meeting. People branded it a visionary project, but unfortunately, I didn’t see the vision.

Besides looting, what exactly was the logic of proposing to buy every kid who joins primary school a tablet every year instead of buying a batch of computers that everyone will use for as long as they are in school? This would be like opening a Cyber Café where you insist that instead of using the machines that are already available, every customer has to buy a tablet and take it home with them.

But the flop of this pet project by President Uhuru Kenyatta is nothing new to Kenyans. Politicians have routinely promised us heaven and failed to even deliver earth. We; the electorate get too excited by promises during campaigns that we forget to ask the hard questions, then we complain that we were deceived.

However, I believe it is a good thing that we are back to the drawing board and will be taking off from where we should have started in the first place. At least now we have learnt that all what is sold to us packaged as succulent campaign promises might not actually be sustainable after elections, especially given the position of Kenya’s economy.

This joins the likes of the Galana-Kulalu irrigation project which started with too much fanfare and quickly gobbled up millions of taxpayers’ funds. Today, the scheme has collapsed with nothing to write home about. We were forced to be optimistic even after the initial indications that the project would be unproductive in the long run.

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Kenya was supposed to be food secure by now, but all we hear is cartels frustrating local farmers to import maize and sugar from overseas. The Kenyan farmer either dealing in food or other cash crops has been impoverished to the point of giving up. We are even importing cheap eggs from neighbouring countries and fish from China at the expense of our local producers.

The five stadiums promised to Kenyans also failed to take off. We were supposed to have five world-class grand stadia in Garissa, Eldoret, Kisumu, Nakuru and Mombasa, but where is even one of them today? Same case with the promised Youth Development Centres in every county which were supposed to house well equipped libraries, ICT hubs and sports facilities.

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We have the Standard Gauge Railway which was implemented successfully, but ended up in loss of billions of shillings. This is the masterstroke of graft in the Jubilee administration. It is painful that even our great grandchildren will be paying China for the loan that was used to enrich a few individuals instead of laying the railroad.

Free primary and secondary education is another unfulfilled campaign promise. Parents with children in public schools continue to pay for their children’s stay in learning institutions despite breathing a sigh of relief when the Jubilee stalwarts claimed not a single penny would be demanded from them as the government would be footing all academic bills. That assurance is now gone.

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The health sector is also on its knees. We were however promised that there would be improved pay packages for medical personnel, free maternity services and universal healthcare for all where access to affordable medical services would be accessible to all Kenyans. This today is a pipe dream that many would have wished to see turn into reality.

If I’m not wrong, we were also promised a 7-10 percent economic growth rate in the first two years of the Jubilee government. Whether this has come to pass is doubtful, and the common Mwananchi is yet to feel the effects of any improvement in the economy, however marginal. In fact, the living standards of the average Kenyan have been plummeting every year.

The only thing that we have seen thriving is corruption. Every day, we wake up to startling revelations of one mega corruption scandal and another of bigger magnitude the following day. This is what Kenyans have come to get used to. We have accepted that our fate as a country was sealed the moment we made our democratic choices at the ballot.

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Actually, instead of counting the failures of the Jubilee government, I would like someone to point out clearly what was in the 2013 Jubilee manifesto that has been achieved today. I might be complaining too much of not seeing the work of the government when they are actually overworking. But if I can be honest, I feel deceived by this administration.

As a Kenyan citizen watching all these, I am left wondering whether someone misled my president into setting unachievable targets, whether he lacks the goodwill to steer the nation forward, whether he is being sabotaged from within his own government or whether the job was just too big for him to accomplish.

These unfulfilled promises will haunt President Uhuru Kenyatta for the rest of his life.

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