The County Governments, the Members of County Assemblies, the elected Senators, Members of the National Assembly being the Member of Constituency and the County Women Representative of the Counties of Kakamega, Bungoma, Busia, Vihiga, Trans Nzoia the only resource you have is your electorate the people of those Counties.
Yes, how do you elected leaders for the next five years plan to harness this greatest resource at your disposal,that of your combined five Counties is a population of approximately 5,152,289 million? Other parts of Kenya have promising signs of natural minerals like oil, coal, titanium but for us it’s the people who are our greatest available resource, asset. How are you as the elected leaders of the region skilling, yes skilling, training, educating, sharpening this great resource of your people, the majority of whom are youth to be the engines of transformation of the region through knowledge, innovation, creativity, modernized economic productivity.
Forget about grandiose projects in infrastructure. They are useless, will be white elephants, unless you have first tackled the question of harnessing, empowering your people, making them skilled, making them productive, making them empowered to be participants in the modern economies you are struggling to construct making them have capacity to utilize those infrastructure projects.
Where are the blue prints, marshal plans, western plans to harness the children, the youth, to prepare them to compete in a modern economy? And the middle aged, the women, the elderly so that they are self dependent entrepreneurs, skilled labour for employment and self employment. Where are your philosophies, your models of empowering, harnessing the only asset at your disposal, your people? Is the philosophy one of empowerment, teaching people how to fish for themselves in a modern economy or one of entrenching dependency subsistence survival, hand to mouth eking of a living, welfarism,? Where are the building blocks of entrenching self reliance, increased productivity, increasing the personal, individual and county gross domestic product and the aspiration to be rich is glorious.
Where are the discussions, the plans, the measures, the goals to harness the people power through skilling, training, appropriate education? Are the children who start class one going to finish primary and secondary schooling and then to tertiary training depending on their aptitudes? Are there enough, well equipped primary schools, secondary schools, tertiary institutions to absorb the children, the youth without the region having to export its wealth to other regions seeking to train its children, youth? What are the social, economic, political obstacles to skilling, harnessing the full potential of our people? What social practices militate against, undermine the education of our boys and girls and empowerment of women that must be eradicated?
Why are our youth who leave secondary schools not eager to enroll in the regions polytechnics at all levels? How do they hope to be productive without post secondary school skilling, training? What are the aspirations, dreams of our youth? Are they formed, influenced by lack of modern world reality? How do we reframe the way our people understand, interpret the present and future world and so as to embrace the enduring benefits, proper education, training, skilling for the modern world is a life and death question.
Where are the programmes for human capital capacity building, drilling the ethos of productivity, skillsets? Where are the thinkers, the think tanks, human capital development resource centres? Where are the programmes that inform the linkages between the regions social, economic and political realities of the region and the educational outputs, priorities?
Are the people ready, hungry to uptake projects, produce raw materials for agro based industries? Are the people willing to produce and supply the raw materials ingredients for value addition industries? Do they understand and appreciate the fundamentals of capitalism, capital formation, modernization, wealth creation. How do the County Governments uplift the majority of the people from peasantry, a subsistence economy into a modern economy?
Governors Oparanya, Wangamati, Ojaamong, Otichillo and Khaemba how and what quantifiable percentage of your governments resources, waking time are you expending to unlock, harness the potential of the only asset you have in abundance, the people? Which think tanks, special advisors, have done it experts do you have cracking for you, helping you urgently as a state of emergency, unravel, decode, unleash the people’s potential you have overflowing in your Counties but remain untapped, unexploited? The people, the children, boys and girls, youth, men and women young and old are the most powerful resource, asset, that the Counties of the former Western Province and Trans Nzoia County have. What are we doing to exploit that resource, asset? If we harness that asset we will prosper as a people in this generation and those to come. People first, all other things will logically fall in place. God has blessed us with this great resource what must we do to unlock its full potential?