Opinion: Interior CS Fred Matiang’i should be praised for his leadership

I belong to the school of thought that leaders are born and not made. The late John Muchuki was effective in all the ministries he headed. He belongs to those born leaders. Interior CS Fred Matiang’i has been effective, so far, in all the ministries he has headed. In my view, he too, belongs to leaders born. Leaders lead and managers manage.

His hands-on leadership approach enables him to make decisions based on the facts, closest to the reality on the ground rather than the report-driven decision from offices. The Lean Thinking Approach demands that leaders make fact-based and not on report-based decisions. Thus Matiangi is on the leading-edge and should be congratulated and enumerated by the other Cabinet Secretaries.

Cheating

The country at large, including his critics, agree that Matiang’i has stopped examination cheating, both at primary and secondary schools. We needed him to leverage the goodwill in stopping the examination cheating at universities. It is my contention that those who cheated at primary level went on to cheat at secondary level and were experts at cheating in university examinations.

Releasing exams early

In my view, Matiang’i did this to eliminate manipulation of results and since the technology is available for its implementation, only the rulers of examination cheater nation are on the crying side. Furthermore, it enables parents to be aware of their tuition and other expenses in good time.

Private universities

To me, this is a moral issue as well as a logical issue. Morally it is wrong to create university business of idiots. John Rohn a re-owned motivational speaker and a leadership speaker acclaims that “if you motivate an idiot, you get a motivated idiot.” Hence passing students on ‘moderation’ is passing the back upstream which eventually results in a ‘moderated’ graduates who can only qualify into the un-employ-ability community that is mushrooming in this country and will soon be problematic to society.

Small number of As

"As" in academia are reserved for the few extraordinary individuals in this country. When I did my Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) and O’Level and A’Level examinations, an A grade in any subject was whispered throughout your location. You were the pride of the community, village, and location at large! So for some to claim that we dilute the poignancy of As through moderation, is an abuse of the system.

Students’ mass failure

There are variables that need to be looked at:

The cheating culture that was started before the Matiang’i reforms. We have lots of students who were either promised of leakage and/or cheating, unknowing of the timing of the naming of Matiang’i as the education CS. They are many and still in the pipeline. I am therefore urging the Matiang’i critics to wake up to the current reality and as a consequence, wake up their children or else the mass failures will continue·

The products of the “Teacher Training Institutions.” When Matiang’i standardised the Primary Teachers Training Examination and its being marked by KNEC, there were mass failures. You critics out there, are you blaming this on Matiang’i too? My point here is that there is a teachers’ competencies issue to be looked at. The product of poor teaching will necessarily be of poor quality. Matiang’i just highlighted the problem.

It is my view that if President Uhuru can have five Matiang’I’s, Kenya might be looking at achieving vision 2030. Otherwise if we cheater community corrupts our ministries, especially Education which is the suppliers of our future leaders, vision 2030 is just but vision 2030.