Cheeky look at Jacob Kaimenyi’s proverbial nine lives

Not too long ago, beautiful Priscilla Nyokabi harboured ugly thoughts about Prof Jacob Kaimenyi. I was tickled to no end when she said the good prof was so obnoxious he wouldn't be admitted to heaven. She forgot that it will be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a Kenyan legislator to go to heaven; they could very well be in hell together, you know.

Call it fate or pure luck, hate him or like him, but Kaimenyi has the proverbial nine lives of a cat, at least politically speaking. He has survived all sorts of juggernauts; he proved to Knut and Kuppet that he is a hard nut to crush.

 Cotu Secretary General Francis Atwoli shouted from rooftops, calling for his resignation in vain. Heck, he even survived a ‘curse’ and excommunication for allegedly insulting the Njuri Ncheke leadership. Basically, like Amalinze the cat in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Kaimenyi’s detractors have been unable to pin his back down.

More recently, he survived an ouster motion in bunge by Geoffrey Odanga, Member of Parliament for Matayos. If, for instance, Nyokabi had said the aforementioned thing of Odanga, I would have chanted ‘amen’.

Mr Odanga swore to teach Kaimenyi a lesson in humility and ended up with egg all over his face. He may have to smart for a while before trying again; assuming he hasn’t lost steam and feels inclined to prove a point.

For the uninitiated, Matayos is one of the seven constituencies in Busia County. There is a Facebook page - Busia County Media Centre - on which an opinion poll that ranked the performance of the seven MPs in January, placed Odanga last with a 30 per cent approval rating. One of the commentators was actually surprised Odanga could score anything above 15 per cent.

Matayos is a backwater with high poverty levels and low school enrolment compared to adjoining constituencies. The number of students who make it to the apex of education is negligible.

 While this should convince Odanga to root for affordable education, he would rather chase the mirage that is Luhya unity--which we recently told you, when achieved, is as short-lived as a chicken fight-- and negative endeavours like making Prof Kaimenyi redundant.

It’s a shame, and I am not persuaded he conjured up the parliamentary farce all by himself. Some mischievous characters might have put him up to it, which begs the question; were there percentages for the choir boys who had taken up Knut and Kuppet’s refrain; ‘ Kaimenyi must go’?

Given the mercenary nature of that special class of Kenyans, I would be surprised if there was no transaction. I don’t subscribe to the belief that humility is an aspect of competency, especially when the actual interpretation of either word derives from the lexicon of parliamentarians.

From the time businessmen, politicians and an assortment of hecklers hijacked the engine of education and knocked it; the quality of education has gone everywhere but up. Now that Kaimenyi is implementing policies that seek to fix the slow engine knock, these fellows are raising all manner of objection.

 Intuition tells me none of the ranking proponents ever got ranked except on school report cards, yet that did not stop them becoming who they are today. Even among MP rankings, Odanga is not among the bright boys; not by a long shot. Would I be wrong to say many who emerged tops during the ranking days were just meteorites, not galaxies?

Where is the pain for Odanga’s ilk in Prof Kaimenyi saving the Kenyan child from a pernicious school regime? Even under the guise of improving education, it is insensitive to have little kids in school as early as five or six in the morning. Worse still, the children are turned into miniature old men and women sporting bent backs from carrying tomes every morning when they should be running around free, jovial and noisy.

Head teachers have decried delays in the Ministry of Education’s disbursement of subsidies, yet a simple requirement to account for the money to the ministry is raising such hackles, one wonders what there is to hide.

Why would anybody in their right frame of mind object to more students accessing education by making it affordable? Maybe County Education Boards should control school funds; they are the lesser evil who are not in the clutches of unions.