Let’s avoid the road that will lead the nation to violence

The National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) is undeniably sleeping on the job. One wonders why, despite ear-splitting rhetoric from its chair Francis Xavier ole Kaparo, no action has been taken against key leaders known for hate speech.

The violence that gripped our nation in 2007-2008 is still fresh in our minds. The menace of internally displaced persons is not yet over.

Memories of forced evictions, wanton destruction and looting of property, raping, beheading, forced circumcisions and a horde of other horrors continue to haunt this nation.

Even with full knowledge of all these atrocities, our politicians are seemingly prepared to blindly walk us back to the woods yet again.

Their language is unrepentant coated with a massive wave of tribal hatred, intolerance, negative ethnicity and divisive sentiments.

Again, we are witnessing political calculations and machinations characterised by incessant, promiscuous and impromptu marriages of parties aimed at loosely curving the nation along tribal lines.

The so-called ‘State of the Nation Address’ delivered early this year at Serena Hotel in Nairobi by the former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who is also a presidential hopeful come 2017 General Election, and the stinging insinuations that UhuRuto and their political acolytes may be planning to rig the elections, is a classic example of divisive political rhetoric.

Methinks Raila should be preaching peace instead of complaining of imaginary thieving and endlessly raising our emotions as a people day in day out.

As a nation, we have a history tainted with an unfortunate bloody electioneering. As a leader, Raila knows very well what such insinuations can culminate into.

In a nut shell, in the eyes of his ardent followers, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission is already guilty and thus should he lose to the incumbent, ‘mass action’ choruses will be justifiable.

The former prime minister has a moral duty of uniting Kenyans and not doing rounds amplifying deep-seated fears of the electorate.

As a peace-loving patriot, I am of the opinion that Raila owes Kenyans an apology. He should explain to Kenyans why he is so sure IEBC commissioners are prepared to rig an election that is almost 19 months away.

Last year, George Aladwa and Moses Kuria who are die-hard political lieutenants of CORD and JAP respectively, endlessly engaged in hate speech that has since rekindled the tribal hatred witnessed prior to the 2007 General Elections.

That the two are not yet behind bars is a clear sign our political leaders are not serious about taming such divisive characters and putting them where they belong.

The Jubilee administration might be guilty of reneging on its pre-election pledges.

It has a few bad leaders responsible for the runaway and rampant corruption and yes, there could be both real and imaginary people dreaming of ‘stealing’ Raila’s win; but why issue such unjustifiable inflammatory statements to an electorate yearning and waiting for any excuse to cause chaos?

I have lots of respect for our leaders, Raila included. That said, however, I abhor leaders whose full time preoccupation is feeding Kenyans with lie after lie.