‘I’ll be playing basketball with the president
Give away a few Mercedeses like ‘here lady have this,’
Toss a coupla milli in the air just for the heck of it ...
When I’m a billionaire.’
A Bruno Mars song.
Now, all of last week, the media treated us to the circus of some young I.T. clown called Alex Mutuku who was charged in court for hacking into the KRA systems and making off with four billion shillings.
Let me just put that cash in its own line so that every wannabe can see what we’re talking about.
KShs 4, 000, 000, 000.00. I have even thrown in the zero cents at the end for free.
Four billion. And bloggers and media had a field day saying how the young man led a ‘flamboyant’ lifestyle, as they splashed pictures sourced from his Facebook account for all of us to see.
But as my friend Ooko Olonde pointed out, those pictures are not for somebody with four billion, or even a billion, or anything close to nine or even eight figures stashed away in their account.
Billionaire flamboyance is not posing and posting lonesome pictures of selfies with one’s sorry ass self in a swimming pool whilst on a trip to Zanzibar, a green motorbike, a random home in Roysambu and a white mongrel dog in front of a Toyota aka a ‘toy-o.’ That is just excitement by a young wannabe in his twenties.
Billionaires have mansions in Lavington that come complete with their own heated pools, and a garage with a Range Rover and Mercedes Benz and BMW, and a chopper with its own helipad in aforementioned mansion and they go for holidays in places with names like Hawaii, Monaco and the French Riviera – (Dubai being a place one just passes through, and not goes to).
Think about what a billion bob can get you, amigo.
If I had a billion to blow like in that Bruno Mars wimbo, I would get a house in the Shs 100 million like my ‘hero’ Health PS Nicholas Muraguri, get into the real estate racket for another quarter a billion, sort out the next generation with a Shs 200 meter trust, get what the super-rich folks call a portfolio (stocks and bonds) for Shs 200 m, buy a houseboat for fifty million, keep a hundred meter in the bank to chapa laps to far flung destinations at a whim and since I can never ‘bless’ those gospel fleecers in the name of the tithe, spend the last hundred million creating a book prize in my name that would give a million shillings a year in prize money to a winning local novelist.
That way we’d be remembered for a century in the reading community, as opposed to being appreciated for a few minutes, then next week, this page is wrapped around nyama in some butchery.
In other words, respect what a billion bob is instead of tossing such titles on the likes of Mutuku.
Or as my pal Ooko put it – ‘Omera, patia bilioni hessima ambaye anatosea yeye!’
So let us, then, ask ourselves this question. If four billion is indeed missing from the Kenya Revenue Authority, and the case against Alex indicates that this colossal sum did indeed disappear into thin air, who took it?
If it is not the young wannabe posing in front of a Toyo with a white mongrel pup, who is it, boss?
Where is the shadowy billionaire with the big bucks and the chopper and the mansion, and the offshore account in the Cayman Islands? And why are we allowing ourselves to be served with a tiny diversionary wannabe omenas like Mutuku, while the sharks and big mbutas are swimming away into the sea?
The day we do lifestyle audits in this country is the day we’ll stop saying ‘sasa mnataka nifanyaje?’
