Fine, Kenya may have one of the most corrupt police in the world, who will have no qualms denying the country the opportunity to expose what some of our church men really are – con men and habitual drunks who feign punctilious piety and swear by the living water, but quaff a whole crate of beer before driving on the wrong side of the road.
Of course, some of our church leaders - and I know a good number - may be true men of God preaching the good word and abiding by the laws of this and the world hereafter. But there are the shifty-eyed, rotten ones who hide behind the pulpit to line their pockets with tax-free millions, all the while suggestively staring at the faithful’s spouses; and leading a starkly opposite life after nightfall.
Indeed, it is a grave matter that we live in a country where MPs, MCAs and other leaders claim mileage and sitting allowance for fictitious trips and House sessions and have been accused of asking for cash before they can do what they are paid to do, or even the contrary, depending on who is paying, or buying at the local bar. And, Oh yes, we need to be really worried when our country, this heritage of splendour, cannot fully account for a whopping Sh67 billion in just one financial year.
The social scandal of tribalism and politically instigated enmity – from the stale jokes and gut-wrenching insults on Facebook to the skewed Government appointments – should really worry us, especially after the 2007-2008 violence. It is disheartening that, five years after we passed a Constitution to define how to share the national cake and therefore defuse the ethnic tension-packed rush for State House, which the tribal tin gods convinced us was “Our community’s only hope,” we still appoint cronies and tribesmen. And when those in power appoint their clansmen, those outside power use this golden to go on and on about “enemies,” as if everyone in the ‘accused’ two tribes got favoured with a job or sat at a baraza to endorse it.
They are not laughing matters, these national problems we find ourselves in.
But when you think about the majority of our issues, you realise how absurd and eccentric our leadership – from the pulpit to the political podium – is. Where else on earth does a man of God die after taking a blue pill, and with a choir member in a guest house? Or where do you ever hear of a church leader connecting the door to the church to electricity, with a view to electrocuting his enemies, should they try to walk into the church as happened recently in Nyeri?
Or the one who bamboozles a whole church with incorrigible mumbo-jumbo before having all the church property registered in his name! Or where else do you hear that a man who had convinced over 200,000 followers that he is a ‘living god’ has died? Or where someone gets conned of hundreds of thousands in bank loan by a Mganga from Zanzibar or miracle preacher?
Folks, if there ever was a nobel prize for absurdity, we would be eternal winners. Where else would people who never miss an opportunity to insult their ‘enemies’ at funerals be considered statesmen or ‘mheshimiwa’?
While I do not wish to poke fun at corruption, tribalism, cluelessness, and other ills in high places, I guess someone visiting from another planet would find us quite an eccentric lot.
Fancy a panel of MPs (up to their temples in claims of fake mileage and sitting allowances and votes-for-cash) summoning a State official to “shed light” on some financial scandal? Who are we kidding? Don’t you want to look at such a scene and burst out in peals of laughter?
If our drunk pastors driving on the wrong side of the road, or greedy ones who register church property in their names, as well as boozers who think lights have been put off when they go blind, did not cause the nation so many deaths and agony, they would pass for a comical lot. But this absurdity, for all its comic twists, must end because it has caused us tragic losses as a nation.