By Ferdinand Mwongela
I went into panic mode when the Commission for Higher Education, ironically abbreviated as Che, started talking about unaccredited universities.
Mark you; this was decades after hardworking Kenyans spent years getting qualifications from these ‘great’ institutions.
I did not go to any school with ‘international’ in its name. I am just worried that one day Che might wake up and decide I do not deserve that certificate I carried proudly into an interview room not very long ago.
But do not be worried. Che is a government institution, I think. So they will probably never get around to most people.
Funny enough, I heard rumours about the government verifying its employees’ certificates. Now, if the same government has no idea what kind, or veracity, of certificate employees hold, how would they know about Jua kali people like me, whose only interaction with the government is on pay day, that little thing called tax that takes more money than my monthly expenses bill?
I also only seem to interact with government in a traffic jam, standing still as the man on the hill rushes past headed somewhere, with a motorcade paid for with the money I am not making stuck in traffic. Or on a few occasions, like the other night staggering home, when a cop in questionable attire, unless gumboots are standard issue these days, shorn a torch in my face and barked, “Simama!”
Of all these, the only person who makes me quake in my boots is the taxman, the chap who has access to my pay even before I do. Oh, the atrocity! Maybe we should negotiate a system where I get my pay first then bargain with the Times Towers about how much I think he deserves.
Anyway, when an ’international’ university is happily announcing itself in the local press right under the nose of Che, at what point is this commission supposed to speak?
Reminds me of a saying about closing the barn door after the horse has bolted, or laying siege to an empty valley after the cattle rustlers have driven away everything (like what the government is doing up north).
I think somebody should also come up with a good system for regulating high schools and leave the Ministry of Education out of this. I would particularly like to know how some school situated on the second floor of some building used to whip every school in Eastern Province, mine included, in football.
Makes me wonder where they held their training practices.
