The ‘Kenya We Don’t Want’ conference

By Peter Okong’o

President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga open the three-day "Kenya We Want Conference" tomorrow at the Kenyatta International Conference (KICC) in Nairobi.

That title is completely misplaced. The agenda of the conference is fairly obvious. For the umpteenth time, Kenyan’s are being asked to waste their time to recycle ideas that may or may never be implemented.

Let me put this in perspective. Most of us over 20 years old can recall the Nairobi We Want conference held some 10 years ago.

City residents were invited to give their views on the kind of city they wanted.

After the conference, the organizers gave themselves a pat on the back and a voluminous report was compiled and published. The sponsors never got ther money’s worth.

Since then, nothing much has changed for Nairobi. Apart from planting flowers and trees around the city, and mending a few roads here and there, and restoring streetlights in selected parts, Nairobi is still very much the filthy city in the dark.

The muggers are back full throttle and the streetlights are dying off one by one.

Back to tomorrow’s conference. We already have the Vision 2030 document, which, I deign to presume, was prepared after rigorous consultation of the citizenry.

The only lkely outcome of the conference is another voluminous report with beautiful ideas that will gather cobwebs.

Kenyans know what they want and it is summarized in the Vision 2030 document, therefore is the basis of the Kenya We Want.

Let the Government first implement that plan, and then, five years from now, the organizers of tomorrow’s conference can now call a meeting titled: "Where Do We Go from Here." Tomorrow’s conference should be called the "Kenya We Don’t Want Conference". An even better title would be, "How Did We Get Here?"

That would assure them of a full house with queues of wananchi stretching out of the venue and spilling on to City Hall, ready to unload their frustrations.

Incidentally, I would be among them, since I have a couple of things I would love to get off my chest.

Although, having said that, I’m not so sure that Kibaki and Raila would be keen to attend, if the title were changed to reflect the current mood of most Kenyans.