Events that seem designed to keep us angry, in crisis mode

The tragic dormitory fire at Utumishi Academy claimed the lives of 16 students. [File, Standard]

If you can make your enemies angry while staying calm yourself, you gain a decided advantage. Stage spectacles for those around you. Dazzled by appearances, no one will notice what you are really doing— Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power.

Every event in Kenya these days seems designed to keep Kenyans in a state of constant crisis, drama and anger, and provide cover for someone. That political systems under siege thrive on crisis, best explains why we rarely have a brand-new crisis in Kenya; why even the most tragic crisis seems eerily familiar.

It explains why all attempts to establish an effective national and county disaster preparedness mechanism have failed: Because corrupt systems survive on crisis—so much so that if a crisis does not happen, it becomes imperative to create one.

Take this year for example. We started 2026 with crisis and drama over Grade 10 placements that were such a mess that some boys were initially placed in girls’ schools. Someone quietly watched from the sidelines as we blew our energy on national debates on the incompetence of our Competence-Based Education.

On the sidelines, there were the ODM-UDA shenanigans that quickly made us forget the sudden death of opposition politics icon, Raila Odinga, now forgotten like last year’s clouds. We even forgot about the Adani airport project that had our veins nearly bursting with anger.

And quietly, someone got away with it.

February came, and when things were getting boring, the Russian mercenary recruitment drama popped up to keep us busy. Someone simply grabbed popcorn and sat down to watch us shout ourselves hoarse. Then the drama quietly slipped away.

Somewhere in the middle of the noise it created, the Sh11 billion Talanta Stadium scandal quietly slipped away—forgotten like a blade of grass in a frozen Russian winter. At State House, someone added more popcorn.

Enter March, and Kenyans needed some drama to take away attention from the floods sweeping through the streets of Nairobi—like sending the police to City Hall at night to arrest Nairobi’s governor: Have we heard anything about arresting Johnson Arthur Sakaja since then? Nope—it was just another scene in the play that is Kenya.

The flooded streets were forgotten, but not before someone created another diversion by demolishing market stalls, claiming they were built on the Nairobi River, and threw in a story about demolishing part of the State House wall to make the script more tantalising.

More popcorn at the house on the hill!

But there was another crisis that needed some distraction: The fuel crisis. Everyone had seen it coming, but no one prepared for it. When it finally hit home, the name Hormuz became a household word - another distraction, another drama, like the dramatic night arrests where millions of shillings were allegedly found stashed in bedrooms and living rooms, alongside stories of phantom ships loaded with poisonous fuel.

This, for a moment, drew our attention away from the fuel crisis that was rapidly unfolding.

A display of fireworks in Wajir during this year’s Madaraka Day fitted perfectly with the script - it was probably the first time the people of northern Kenya saw so many soldiers who were not coming to kill them.

Suddenly, we have forgotten about the painful pump prices. We have even forgotten that we allowed our government to lower the quality of fuel, effectively raising the level of the poison in the air around us.

The tragic dormitory fire at Utumishi Academy was barely mentioned at a National Prayer Breakfast—another national distraction—held on the same morning that it happened. We shall forget about the waves of school unrest too, because they too are serving their purpose.

That there are private residences in this country holding more cash than local banks is no longer a secret: As our eyes focus on the drama, the endless crises and the anger, someone is well on his way back to power, and the rats are in overdrive, pilfering from our national and county granaries.

Mr Muchiri is a media and public communications consultant. [email protected]