A nation’s pain: Issues pushed to backburner over Covid-19

People wait to be given food in Kibera, Nairobi. [Collins Kweyu/Standard]

The education calendar is the clearest deferred agenda in Kenya following the advent of the new coronavirus disease (Covid-19), two months ago.

Yet Kenya’s postponed agendas are many. They are rife with acute headaches for the Jubilee government expected to steer the country to safe havens.

The huge downpours and heavy floods in the wake of Covid-19 can only complicate matters. The killer rains and floods will push the deferred agendas into greater uncertainty.

Meanwhile, it does not help matters at all that the government is itself badly divided into two mutually hostile camps, this at a time when almost everything that could go wrong is steadily going that way. When the virus is eventually contained, there will be a huge raft of suspended and even collapsed agenda to address.

President Uhuru Kenyatta’s second term began in November 2017 with the dream of the Big Four Agenda. Looking into the seeds of time after his second inauguration on November 28, 2017 the President saw himself leaving behind a rich legacy. He dreamt of a healthy and well fed nation, living in a homely environment, by the time he retires in 2022.

The President had the vision of a country on a great industrial takeoff, with a budding, but robust, manufacturing sector. Accordingly, President Kenyatta condensed the Jubilee campaign manifesto of 2017 into the four focal areas of food security, affordable housing, manufacturing and healthcare for all. 

At the start of the second term, the only discernible menace to Uhuru’s four-point agenda was a creeping political uncertainty, occasioned by a restless opposition. An angry and potentially explosive opposition said, at the time, that it did not recognise him. It even formed the National Resistance Movement (NRM) as a vehicle of contesting his authority.

Uhuru entered 2018 overwhelmed with a heavy cloud over his legitimacy. The National Super Alliance (NASA) had boycotted the repeat presidential election of October 26, 2017 and firmly denied him the credibility every head of state and government requires, for an enabling working environment. 

Big Four lockdown

The March 9, 2018 handshake between the President and Raila Odinga of NASA blew in a peaceful wind of change. It allowed the government space to focus on its programmes. Added to the preset Big Four was the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), a nine-point mission sold as Kenya’s new blueprint to the future. The virus scuttled the Big Four Agenda and the BBI, alongside other urgent tasks. 

President Kenyatta saw the Big Four as the elixir of social, economic and political stability. The four constituted the magic wand that would create jobs and enable Kenyans address the basic needs of life.

He pledged to dedicate the energy, time and resources of his government fully to this agenda and in the process craft his own legacy for future generations. The Big Four got a rare boost when the ODM Party joined in promoting it at every opportunity following the handshake.

The unexpected advent of Covid-19 has since placed the Big Four into an indefinite lockdown. It has shifted the government’s focus from proactive activities to firefighting. 

A 100 per cent national food and nutrition security was the target in 2017. As part of the strategy, the Jubilee government introduced the notion of Huduma Number, a one-stop shop for all personal identification needs.

It was expected that Huduma would provide a national database for all food production related household across the country.

It would create a dependable register of all farmers – large and small scale alike – and ease subsequent state based interventions in support to farming and food production.

As things stand, Huduma is now a forgotten item, as is food security.

In place of food security, the government now has the daunting task of giving food support to the most vulnerable households, owing to a veritable collapse of sustenance.

The Institute of Economic Affairs estimates that 83 per cent of Kenyans operate in either the informal sector or in a peasant economy. They live from hand-to-mouth, cutting off one day at a time. The emerging situation threatens to push them to the brink. 

Conscious of this factor, the government has been at great pains to avoid a total lockdown of the country, despite what could be described as inadvertent provocation by a citizenry whose livelihood and very survival involves blatant breaches of most of the state-driven guidelines against Covid-19.

Kenya’s informal and peasant economy sectors pool people into crowded spaces to eke out a living.

Markets are overcrowded, while the commuter motorbike is the common mode of transport, with some bikes carrying as many as four persons at a time.

The dangers portended by such environments have forced the government to plead with Kenyans to stay at home while the uncertainty lasts. There is massive loss of income and sustenance, leading to frustration both in the citizenry and government.

The one hundred per cent food security dream in the Big Four is slowly, but surely, melting into a food support programme.

On Saturday last week, the food aid programme for the most vulnerable began in Nairobi, targeting slum dwellers in some of the most dislocated populations in the city. A worrying factor was the obvious token nature of the support, this far.

While some token food has been handed out to needy Kenyans at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC), there are more millions waiting in Nairobi and beyond.  

Besides, the rations being given cannot last beyond a few days before the need for more returns. Clearly, lasting food security will have to wait for now, as the more immediate need is to find something at all for hungry families across the country. 

The situation has been aggravated by heavy rains that have pounded the country from last month. The rains have led to viscous floods and landslides that have directly affected at least 233,000 people, according to the Kenya Red Cross.

Nearly, 300 have been killed in the still-unfolding natural disasters, with 116,000 rendered homeless in parts of Central Kenya, Northeastern, Western, Nyanza and Rift Valley. There has been destruction of shelter, and massive loss of livestock.

At least 36 out of 47 counties are affected. The Metrological Department has, meanwhile, forecast more rains and floods in the rest of the month of May.

The combined effect of the epidemic and the weather gone awry bodes poorly for any programed approaches to national agenda. The government has set in place the National Emergency Response Team, coordinated by the Ministry of Health.

An impressive effort to raise funds been undertaken – with about Sh1.5 billion raised so far. The country’s food, housing and health needs that the emergency fund must address, however, run into scores of billions. They make the funds raised so far a drop in the ocean. 

How soon the country begins going back to normal will be critical to freeing some of the resources towards more programmed approaches to state activities. Yet this is easier said than done.

Nobody knows when the bug will be contained and how that could be achieved. Besides, it is not enough to contain the virus in any one country alone. Being a global pandemic, what happens in any one country is important to the rest. Eventually, the bug must be defeated everywhere before postponed agendas could return. 

Health for all

That many workplaces are at least in partial shutdown, has led to loss of income, in whole or part, for many individuals. The risk of total collapse is real for many firms that have previously provided employment. The spinoff could only be a swelling of the hopeless and destitute classes.

The government will have to ponder what to do about these classes, as their destitution comes with a cocktail of frustrations and hopelessness that could blossom into social restlessness and insecurity.

In the emerging scenario, an abridged approach to an interim Big Four Agenda would seem to be of the essence, this time not as a political legacy agenda for President Kenyatta, but as a national necessity.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, the government was working on a universal healthcare programme under the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF).

While the fund faced a challenge that involved wrangles between the government on the one hand and employers and trade unions on the other, the matter was eventually resolved last year. It was expected that the programme that was piloted in Kisumu, Nyeri and Machakos counties would now begin rolling out in others as part of the Big Four legacy.

The programme, like the rest of the Big Four, now hangs delicately in the balance. 

Among other factors, the continued flow of funds to NHIF faces uncertainty, as it is a factor of people being in employment. The fund can then attract contributions from both the employed and employers.

Individuals may also contribute privately to the fund, but the impact of such contributions remains negligible. For NHIF to impact meaningfully on the Big Four’s universal health agenda, jobs will need to be redeemed and earnings regained.

As is the case with manufacturing and affordable housing, the Kenya government may need to shift its goal from the wiping out of Covid-19, to living with the virus. 

Indeed, the entire global community may need to be enjoined in this change of emphasis, for nobody knows whether it is possible to conquer the virus and how soon – if at all.

The challenge is compounded by the reality that viruses and other bugs have a way of mutating into new varieties that come with fresh complications. Already, expert opinion from the US suggest that the new coronavirus may have begun mutating. Countries hoping to conquer the bug before picking up their suspended agendas could be in for extremely long periods of waiting.

Kenya must also grapple with suspended political and legal challenges, foremost among them the BBI. While the urgency of the BBI pales in the face of emerging humanitarian disasters, it remains a critical item on the list of things to be done.

Electoral agenda

Its critics have faulted the BBI on account of heavy focus on the Executive by the political class. Opportunistic political posturing aside, the integuments of the BBI bear some very critical items to Kenya’s future. Electoral reform is easily the foremost among these.

It is recalled that the March 9 handshake that led to the BBI was a factor of an electoral process that some saw as hugely flawed. The NASA family appeared ready to set the country on fire, after the political bigwigs across political parties failed to agree on minimum electoral reform ahead of the October 26 repeat presidential poll.

It is, therefore, natural that divisive elections were listed as one of the nine thematic focal points in the BBI. If nothing else is realised in the BBI, electoral reform is, nonetheless a must.

As things stand, Kenya’s electoral system and machinery remains very much in the same place it was in 2017. While time and tide wait for nobody, the country wakes up each morning a day closer to the next general elections. It is daunting to even begin imagining what could happen should the matter of electoral reform remain in limbo beyond the next few months. 

Before the outbreak of Covid-19, the ODM squad was pushing hard for a national referendum on the Constitution of Kenya (2010), with its focus vastly on elections and the possibility that this could level the path to power, or at the very least make it easier for them to share in Executive power in the future.

There is already palpable anxiety in ODM about the state of things, with last week’s outburst in Parliament possibly being only the tip of a massive iceberg.

Parliament was last week treated to rare spectacles of dissent, both in the National Assembly and the Senate. Angry ODM and Tangatanga politicians questioned the management of the Covid-19 situation and the floods with angst that has not been earlier witnessed in the current Parliament.

A careful reading of the situation reveals political anxiety on the part of both ODM and Tangatanga. 

Since the handshake, ODM MPs have played the good guys card. They have bent backwards over to be pleasant to President Kenyatta and even apologised on numerous occasions. Pundits have understood this political fawning to be their way of assuring the President that they have turned a new leaf.

The message has been that they can be trusted to be good partners in future political arrangements in government. Things have, however, seemed to roll painfully slowly, especially after Covid-19. 

Call of the bugle

The rumpus in Parliament is only, therefore, the new call of the bugle, sending out, at once, a wakeup call and a warning shot at the President that some of the forgotten agendas must be brought back on the table, barring which there will be consequences.

ODM has chosen a strategic moment, when the President is surrounded by the challenges posed by Covid-19 and the floods on the one hand, and the loss of Deputy President William Ruto’s support on the other.

The strategy is to bite in Parliament and soothe the bite with a puff of diplomatic air in other forums.

The mixed signals should hopefully restore some of the forgotten political agenda, in spite of Covid-19 and other challenges.

While the loss of the Tangatanga support is a matter largely of the President’s making with ODM urging him on, nothing stops the Orange party from seizing the ripe moment to close up the ranks with them to run the President out of town, should both see the moment.

There was never any love lost between the President and the ODM squad. If both sides could be sure that their advances will not be repulsed, they could submit to the temptation to jointly turn the heat on President Kenyatta – which they have probably already begun. Quiet meetings between emissaries of both sides are said be taking place in the shadows.

But the country has a legion other forgotten marbles to juggle. There is the unfinished business of appointing the Auditor General, after the retirement of Edward Ouko nearly a year ago. This question is likely to take on a political face, soon.

How, when and who is appointed is likely to be an issue.

Then there is the matter of the Judiciary, including the stalled appointment of 41 judges, succession in the Supreme Court ahead of 2022, computerisation of the judicature and building of new courts. 

Within the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), there is the question of reforming the institution and appointment of commissioners.

The IEBC itself has the unfinished business of reviewing electoral boundaries, further to last year’s national population and household census. This is an emotive and potentially eruptive question that should come after IEBC is reconstituted in a credible manner.

The war against corruption is another lost agenda, with some of the President’s detractors prone to attempting to point fingers at some people close to State House.

Equally important, is the suspended promise of “Uhuru 10, Ruto 10” and the disharmony it has generated in the President’s own party and his home base of Central Kenya.

The Jubilee Party was to go to elections in March. What will happen next is anyone’s guess. The only thing that is clear is that there is a vicious power struggle in the party. 

Affecting almost everybody to a greater or lesser extent remains education. Schools, colleges and universities were among the first institutions to shut down once the virus was confirmed. It is not clear that any organised thinking is going on in the Ministry of Education and elsewhere in government, regarding this suspended agenda.

Parents and guardians, teachers and learners, are getting overwhelmed with a sense of helplessness as “out of school” becomes the new normal.

Kenya’s postponed agenda makes for tall order for those in government, complete with suspended development projects and payments to suppliers. They are enough to give any crowned head sleepless nights.