Well, well, well. Where do we start? Let me start by conceding that I am developing new respect for this administration’s ability to steal. I mean it, sincerely. I think the term used by Gen-Z is “mad respect.”
After many years of being used to crude heists, the sort that the Auditor General and the Controller of Budget routinely and which a complicit Parliament waves on, we’ve become numb to national plunder.
Unless of course politician grabs a school playfield that lures citizens to the streets, where they are gassed by overzealous policemen.
But the Kenya Kwanza kafment is a lot more sophisticated, perhaps because they have bettered their predecessors who hatched international schemes and scams like Eurobonds.
Somehow, those tend to leak. So, they have organised a “local arrangement” that’s designed to work with clocklike precision and reaping maximum returns. This type of theft is akin to blasting a gun using a silencer.
Remarkably, it’s the easiest of all, as it involves a product we use every day, whether you drive Ford Austins like the crooks who fleeced the Youth Fund, or you sell chapatti and madondo cooked using paraffin at that kibanda in the industrial area. We all use fuel.
I think the cool thieves behind the scam are appropriating the sage philosophy of kidogo kidogo hujaza kibaba.
For every litre of kerosene or petrol purchased, the kafment has added an extra Sh7 levy that’s going to a special kitty that’s not recognised in law, nor managed by a known kafment entity. It’s a slush fund for politicians to use and misuse at will.
On paper, the fund is for paying “pending bills” that are unspecified. There is no explanation why these particular bills should be paid separately from the main book, or why they hadn’t been paid in the life of the projects, or even the haste in dispensing with them now.
Even this explanation produces more questions than answers. Rather than wait for the trickle of the seven shillings, one day at a time, the kafment has decided to borrow some Sh175 billion and use the slush fund as collateral! So, they are using money they don’t have, and expecting us to pay for it!
The Busia Senator Okiya Omtata has been litigating to have the kafment disclose the nation’s loan book, because he suspects many loans in question are non-existent. And I’m particularly circumspect because wherever I go, and I have been on the move for a while, I am always met by young men stretching a begging bowl to solicit from motorists for fixing broken roads. That happened in Makueni and Laikipia counties in recent weeks.
I think it’s time we told each other the truth, as Prezzo Bill Ruto likes to say. I get it that he wants to build a church. I won’t quote the figure of Sh1.2b because he claims that’s the language of shetani. But he has said he intends to use his own resources. And he is not inviting us to a harambee.
I won’t say that’s because Kenyans are contributing their seven shillings, wapende wasipende, because I don’t have any evidence, but that would not be an unlikely possibility.
I also get it that we’re heading off to a General Election and some billions—not a devilish estimate—will be needed because politicians are keen on bribing the voters. All the politicos, large and small, will be keen build what jurnos call “war chests” before the elections.
The warfare being invoked, and endorsed, involves who will orchestrate the best performance to hoodwink the citizens. If you believe the young people of this country, it doesn’t matter what politicians say or do; they will send them home. And if you believe some MPs, the conspiracy to steal votes to retain Prezzo Ruto in power, is already in motion.
I hesitate from calling anyone a thief, but whoever designed and executed this fuel scheme to tax Kenyans more, while avoiding any mechanism for accountability is a smart chap, so let’s give the devil his due.
