No Mr President, numbers tell a different story

Form Four students at Kaya Tiwi Secondary School studying for exams on their own as the ongoing teachers' strike entered its fourth week yesterday. [PHOTO: GIDEON MAUNDU/STNDARD]

President Uhuru Kenyatta had to wait for dinner time on a Sunday, when presumably all parents were back in the house with their children, for him to address the country, in what was sort of emotional blackmail to turn the citizens against the teachers who want his Government to pay the court-awarded 50-60 per cent pay rise.

The devil in the President’s speech is in the details of the numbers that he spoke about. There were little lies and big lies. He was using statistics to tell a story that his own institution, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, contradicts.