A Steering Committee of the Building Bridges Initiative was gazetted by President Uhuru Kenyatta on 10th January 2020 to conduct validation of BBI report through consultations with citizens, civil societies, the faith based organizations, cultural leaders, the private sector and experts and to propose administrative policy, statutory or constitutional changes that may be necessary for the implementation of the recommendations contained in the Task Force Report.
The Mandate of the Steering Committee is to conduct validation of the Task Force Report. Validation “is the action of checking or proving the validity or accuracy of something.” So let us get it right, it is not another round of giving new views. For one to therefore make enlightened contributions to the Steering Committee one ought to have thoroughly read and appreciated the Building Bridges Initiative Task Force Report released at Bomas in November 2019. So how many of us have read and appreciated the Task Force Report? Where is it for those who can’t access it on the internet?
The key sectors that the Gazette Notice of 10th January 2020 targeted to participate in validation of the Task Force Report are the (1) Citizens, (2) Civil Society, (3) The faith based organizations, (4) Cultural leaders, (5) Private Sector and (6) Experts. So where are these six targeted stakeholders? Are we not, only hearing the politicians rant and talk about BBI? The politicians will have their say especially the elected ones to contribute either in the County Assembly, the National Assembly or the Senate? Now they are taking over the validation process and spewing so much smoke, venom that the stakeholders targeted to participate in the validation are drowned out, not to be heard. What a tragedy.
You and me as a citizen, the civil society, faith based organization, cultural leaders, private sector and experts must come forward with clearly written validation points on the Task Force Report and present them to the Steering Committee led by Senator Yusuf Haji or we are doomed to be bulldozed into BBI Recommendations laden with the politicians’ narrow, selfish, parochial interests that will only sink our National and County Governance into even worse condition than it is now. The writing is on the wall unless we wake up and do what is right and take ownership of our sovereignty, our Nation from the exploitative clutches of politicians.
Faith based organizations, private sector, experts must not be timid, hesitate and imagine somebody else will do the validation. It is only the citizen, the faith based organizations, private sector, experts who are neutral, objective and can offer long terms solutions to our governance malaise that is presently constructed to serve the elected leaders, public servants, the cabal of the corrupt to the exclusion of the ordinary majority citizens.
We have stated here over and over that the elected leadership and public servants that have hijacked the governance infrastructure of our Nation to advance personal, family, tribal interests will not re-engineer it for the benefit of you and me but will only further entrench their capture of the governance infrastructure of the Nation to the majorities detriment. The problem cannot solve the problems. There is pursuit of power so as to loot at any cost.
We as citizen’s either wake up to the greatest threat to our survival, the elected leaders and public servants or we are doomed to stew in misgovernance, corruption and capture of our taxes to benefit elected leader and public servants for the foreseeable future. We have to wake up, take on the challenges of misgovernance or we remain doomed to be slaves of the elected leaders and public servants.