By Wahome Thuku
Last Thursday, national leaders gathered in a Nairobi hotel once again for the National Prayer Breakfast. It was the seventh year in which they were doing so.
A local daily erroneously referred to the occasion as National Breakfast Prayer, which is semantically incorrect, but not a wrong title. To millions of citizens, this has always been a ‘private breakfast’, not ‘national prayer’.
The disconnect between the rulers and the ruled is such that we cannot trust them even to pray for us.
National prayer breakfasts started in Seattle in the United States in 1953. President Barack Obama, when marking the 56th occasion on February 5, captured its history and meaning in his speech. "It was the height of the Great Depression," he said. "People found themselves out of work. Many fell into poverty. Some lost everything they owned. The leaders of the community did all that they could for those suffering in their midst. And then they decided to do something more: They prayed."
Obama spoke at a time Americans had just elected the first black man to White House, an achievement celebrated world over, to deal with a crisis similar to the Great Depression.
Our case is different: Throughout history, our leaders have aggravated our suffering. They called us to pray and when our eyes were shut, stole our maize, our oil, raised their salaries and inflated our national budget.
They asked us to pray for security and peaceful elections while plotting massive rigging and bloodshed. They called prayers for economic growth as they fought for places in the bloated Cabinet. We were praying for rains and they were busy hiving off forests and grabbing catchment areas.
So our leaders dare not call us to pray with them for, before we shut our eyes, we will first remind them of this dirty past. They must continue praying at their private breakfast, behind the walls of guarded hotel rooms.
—The writer is a court reporter with The Standard Group.
