Beyond projects: Why leaders must choose love to build lasting legacy

We often ask, “Why does love hate?” But that is the wrong question. It assumes love can regress or sink into something lesser. Love does not descend. Love is ultimate. It is the highest expression of moral maturity, the most forward posture a human being can take. When we give our best, what we give is love. There is nothing higher to return to.

The better question is: Why don’t we choose love when hate fills us? Love is not fragile. Our will is. History—and Scripture—show that even in moments thick with injustice, love remains possible. Jesus, facing betrayal, humiliation and execution, chose love over revenge. On the cross, He did not weaponise power. He absorbed violence and returned mercy. In that act, love proved itself sovereign. Not weak, but world-altering.

Love is not only a feeling. It is a daily exercise of choice. From that perspective, we do not doubt love. We examine our capacity to choose it. We ask how to strengthen our choice—through knowledge, experience, reflection, and inspiration. We know people—ordinary people—who have chosen love when every factor urged hatred. The power is not in love changing in substance – it cannot. The power is in our willingness to embody love, which calls us to continuous change. Our changing towards loving is changed by it.

This Valentine's season invites more than chocolates and flowers. It invites moral reflection. If love is the highest virtue in private life, why do we exile it from public leadership?

Why assume politics must function without it? Kenya’s politics need a Valentine touch.

For too long, citizens have been trained not to expect love from leaders. But love and service are inseparable. Service without love becomes a cold transaction. Love without service becomes empty talk.

When motive is corrupt, even impressive achievements lose their meaning. Many leaders operate on a visible formula: build infrastructure, secure remembrance. But remembrance does not rest on concrete alone. It rests on perception. And perception is shaped by motive.

Mwai Kibaki’s authenticity translated into something profound in the moral imagination of many Kenyans. It felt like care. It felt like love.

Subsequent administrations may have initiated larger and more expensive projects, yet scale alone has not guaranteed the same affection. Why? Because when citizens suspect self-enrichment, the project ceases to speak as service.

Here lies the ethical and theological core: projects alone do not create legacy. Motive does. Scripture reminds us that God weighs the heart. Infrastructure becomes testimony only when the people sense integrity behind it. Leadership is remembered not for cement alone, but for perceived care.

Citizens are not naïve. They know real love. They can sense authenticity. They can also sense performance. Pretence may survive for a season, but truth eventually surfaces.

I have seen a Member of County Assembly more warmly embraced than the area’s Member of Parliament. The applause is unforced.

The explanation is simple: “He feels us.” That is not economic analysis. It is relational language. It is moral recognition. That is the secret.

Theologically, this mirrors the incarnation. God did not declare love from a safe distance; He entered human experience. He drew near. Love listens. Love absorbs. Love responds. Political systems may be misty—but love cuts through fog.

Our remembrance culture reveals this hunger for authenticity. Some days sit politely on the national calendar. Others are engraved in the conscience of the people. Saba Saba. Gen Z Remembrance.

They are not preserved by protocol, but by pain. They are not announced by gazette notice, but by lived experience. There are official anniversaries—and there are moral ones. The first are marked by speeches; the second by scars. 

Broken love is not only political. It can be ecclesiastical. There are priests who serve out of duty rather than love. Pastors who began with fire but drifted into routine.

When the flock becomes an economic asset instead of a sacred trust, ministry turns transactional. Sermons become performance. Presence becomes obligation.

Yet congregations are perceptive. They know when they are loved. I have seen retired ministers preferred over younger, more educated ones.

The explanation is simple: “His teaching speaks to me.” Not because of academic flair, but because of alignment of heart. Scripture distinguishes between the hired hand and the shepherd. One manages sheep. The other loves them. The principle applies equally to politics: service without love may function—but it does not transform.

Leading with love is not weakness. It is the courage to test every motive: Is this truly for the people’s good? Love-led leadership places conscience above ambition.

Too often, systems run transactionally—office becomes a platform for gain. Visibility leadership does the bare minimum—intentionally. Enough to maintain stability. Not enough to transform.

It resembles a spouse who does just enough to keep the marriage intact, but not enough to make it joyful. The home survives, but it does not flourish. So too with nations.

A country can be managed without being loved. But such leadership produces endurance, not devotion. Love is never minimal.

It does not ask, “What is the least I can do to survive?” It asks, “What is the most I can give to build?”

As towns painted themselves red this Valentine season, perhaps we need to rediscover a deeper red—the red of sacrifice, the red that chose forgiveness over revenge, the red that built legacy rather than visibility. Love in leadership is not uninformed. It is courageous. It is ethical. And it is costly.

When leaders choose convenience, they gain headlines. When they choose love, they gain history. Visibility fades with the news cycle.

Legacy settles in the memory of a people. In the end, citizens may forget the scale of your projects. They will not forget how you made them feel. Nations, like hearts, remember love.