Ignorea cynics and exploit black gold

Will the discovery of oil in Turkana benefit all Kenyans or just a handful? Do we have people to trust with this precious item in Kenya?

These are questions many people are asking, including the Turkana community. The County is among the poorest and we are elated the place has ‘gold’.

The chorus from Government has always been ‘the rate of importing oil is high, please be patient’. I hope they will not change to ‘the cost of producing oil is too high for us to manage, please be
patient’.

This is an opportunity to become a big oil producer and create jobs to reduce idleness of youth who engage in crime like cattle rustling.

Modesta Auka Lung’atso, KAKAMEGA.

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The announcement by President Kibaki that oil has been discovered in Ngamia, Turkana is good tidings. The economy will greatly benefit as oil import is the major import bill that has slowed down economic growth.

As the country plans to benefit from this natural resource, the Government should prioritise the needs of Turkana people ravaged by drought and poverty for long. Last year, Kenyans contribute funds to alleviate hunger there.

Now that Turkana people are literally sitting on hidden treasure, their lives should equally be transformed by the proceeds of the oil. They should get priority in jobs.

James Mwangi Kanyi, Nairobi.

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Now that Kenya has announced discovery of deposits of crude oil, it joins Uganda and Sudan who have already reported proven large oil deposits. East African region could soon become the next global oil producing and exporting frontier after the Middle East.

However, oil production has proven to be a blessing and a curse.

As we celebrate, let us hope the black gold turns out to be a blessing in helping in the achievement of Vision 2030 rather than becoming recipe for chaos.

Anthony Mwangi.

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That Kenya has drilled its way to a possible fortune of tonnes oil worth millions of dollars is cause for jubilation.

Our national expenditure in every financial year far outstrips our national income. This situation is untenable as the country’s national debt is bound to be unmanageable. The country has been classified as not being credit worthy.

The newfound oil would be a big boost in addressing this recurrent funding deficit in our budgetary allocation.

Countries like Nigeria, Angola and Sudan are examples of countries disoriented by oil riches rather than enriched.

I shudder to think of what oil revenues could do to a country like Kenya with its heavily ethicised politics, corrupt elite, and an unpatriotic middle class always preoccupied with self-enrichment.

By Onyiego Felix, Nairobi.

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The discovery of oil deposits in Turkana has seen residents who were starving a few months ago celebrating. This calls for creativity among the Turkana to seek educational sponsorships and business loans to enjoy maximum benefits from the drilling.

Boniface N Gichuru, Naivasha

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The importance of this scarce commodity cannot be be laboured. Steps must be taken to disabuse the notion that oil heralds political instability. Cynics will eagerly point at places like Niger Delta where
oil discovery has turned into a curse. The news immediately jolted Kenyans into dance.

The joy should be tempered with the stark realities of the long road to reaping the benefits of the resource.

Nicholas Cheruiyot, Bomet.

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Minister wrong on ethnicity in soccer

In his article, Football hooligans should be prosecuted, banned from the stadium in The Standard On Sunday (March 24), columnist Kilemi Mwiria attempted to portray Gor Mahia and AFC Leopards as teams whose players come only from the Luo and Luhya communities.

This showed a writer who is totally out of touch with the subject he was commenting on.

His lecture on football nationalism is misplaced because I’m not sure Kilemi can tell us who the captain of AFC Leopards is, let alone listing the full team lists of the two clubs he admonishes as tribal.

He merely based his findings on the flimsy history he has of the two clubs.

For starters, like the good minister, the team that Gor Mahia paraded against Sony Sugar FC in Afraha Stadium on the same day the minister’s article appeared, had six non-Luos in the starting 11, while the scorer of the two Ingwe goals on Saturday is a Rwandan.

Good players

But why am I even trying to convince the minister about the tribal compositions of the two teams? Football clubs simply recruit good players. A good player is good despite his origin.

Teams only come to realise the players coincidentally come from the same region. Assume we took the minister seriously and tried to comply with ‘his constitutional quota system requirement’ for recruiting players for the two clubs, how would football look?

Kilemi, from his article, represents those Kenyans who are still stuck to supporting European football while complaining of the ethnicity of the Kenyan game.

They don’t know that even in England, the Arsenal they kill each other for doesn’t enjoy much support out of London while Manchester United is majorly for the residents of the city of Manchester.

I agree though that the hooliganism witnessed occasionally is ugly and we should reform. But I also invite the minister to a local football match in the stadium to know exactly what goes on in Kenya instead of relying on misinformation spread via Twitter by junkies wasting bandwidth on the Internet.

Should he fear the stadium projectiles he could visit the two teams at their training grounds and do a tribal head count to verify his claim.

Tom Bwana, Nairobi.