Jubilee is about creating paper tigers, so speech airlifts aren’t just flights of fancy

Some folks say the Jubilee administration is about kusema na ku-tender, which means talking and tendering, presumably because public procurements have been out of bounds to most Kenyans for a generation.

So when the Government put out a notice inviting bids for the airlift of presidential speeches across the country, I instantly knew we are dealing with a sensitive, open Government that’s responsive to its people’s needs.

Why, in my naïve ways, I mistook presidential speeches as a craft issue, where scribes would be paid half a million chumas for penning just one speech!

I was about to look up that budget airline and secure tickets to some of those pristine beaches that have been left vacant by European tourists, for presidential speeches cannot be drafted just anywhere.

But a second reading of the notice persuaded me that the advertisement was in direct response to opposition alliance, CORD’s challenge to engage in national dialogue.

My imagination went into overdrive as I thought of the punchy lines that would be useful in Prezzo’s maiden. Some presidential insults could come in handy, like linking CORD to its precursor to ODM, which one insightful woman dismissed as nothing but domooo domoooo!

I could even imagine Prezzo UK delivering the line, with feigned solemnity, in that deep baritone of his: “CORD’s conference is a self-fulfilling prophecy, evocative of its origins in ODM, whose acronym means domo, or loud mouth. They are about talking, not the arduous task of walking…”

It’s only when I read the notice for the third time that I realised I had misadvised myself as to the nature of the Government contract. The airlift of presidential speeches, quite simply, was about the physical relocation of stashes of paper bearing Prezzo’s speeches from Nairobi to mashinani (grassroots) where they are to be read on national days.

Why, Prezzo’s words are considered, without any sense of irony, sacrosanct, and so should be accessed even in the remotest reaches of this land.

And for all their troubles, messengers of the good word would be paid Sh12 million annually.

Like most Kenyans, I was left wondering why the President’s speeches can’t fly on their own since they are pumped with generous amounts of hot air. Or even why speeches cannot be delivered on overnight couriers that transport newspapers to every corner of our land.

But to argue that way is to miss the point. Since the Jubilee administration considers newspapers as meat wrap, it would be sacrilegious to consider such options.

Still, there is no reason such speeches should not be delivered on boda boda since this is a Government that claims it stands for youth empowerment.

Think about the number of districts in this land, then calculate the number of boda boda operators who would land instant jobs. And we haven’t even calculated the number of passengers they would pick and drop along the way.

Then there are the opportunities to convert the speeches to other media platforms. Youths could record raps articulating Prezzo’s message (even our neighbour M7 tried to rap), and translate them into local languages for easy delivery.

The same message could be availed on videos that’d go viral once posted on YouTube, not to mention SMSs to be sambazad to millions of users for impact.

The crucial lesson is that Jubilee Government is only digital on paper, so it’s only natural to seek to create paper tigers, and the airlift of Prezzo’s speeches fits perfectly in their flights of fancy.