It is tragic, irresponsible and idiotic that the political class in the Counties of the former Western Province of Kakamega, Bungoma, Busia, Vihiga, and neighbouring Trans Nzoia County whether the young, the old and those aligned with the former Prime Minister Raila Odinga or those aligned to Deputy President William Ruto are fighting each other and outdoing each other as to what method should be used to revamp the same old economy , the story of the collapsed public or semi-private failed industries including Mumias Sugar Company, Nzoia Sugar Company.
Western Kenya needs to chart new economies free from the shackles of the failed industries and in preparation for the post COVID-19 pandemic world economic order in Kenya and the rest of the world.
County Governments of the region and their County Assemblies are still mired in their pre-COVID-19 economic models where they had schemed to perpetrate corruption and are unable to wake up to the reality that very many of the economic models visualized, conjured up, planned for before COVID-19 are now redundant, useless, money wasters and unsustainable.
Let the region, its elected leaders undertake a new SWOT analysis of its strengths in its people and what economic activities they need to engage in, in the post COVID-19 era that will generate employment opportunities, optimum income from farming given our economies are substantially agro-based.
The time is wrong for our elected leaders to yap empty slogans, meaningless mantras of development without understanding the economic realities that COVID-19 has unleashed on the region and the world at large.
The intelligentsia from the region that is not steeped in political charlatanism and trickery must come forward and lead the way in the remaking of the economies of the region post COVID-19. Otherwise we will be relegated further in the dustbins of economic dysfunction and malfunction, deepening poverty and hopelessness for the majority of our people.