Yes, pork barrel politics will be our undoing

Kenyans are good at politicking at every opportunity and at all levels of government at the expense of development.

From the top to the other end of the spectrum, we have made it a specialty to look at everything from the lens of politics.

Development projects are used as a carrot and stick to be dangled in front of the masses (read donkeys) so that they can sing the praises of the demigods that lord over us. Either we are daft as a people, or a cursed lot because we are tricked using the same trick year in year out.

Politicians will take to the podium and promise us heaven but when they get elected, and safely ensconced in their little heaven gilded with gold and honey and milk flows freely, they forget the poor souls who took them there.

These poor souls will don cheap t-shirts with party slogans and sing to the tune of a song whose clarion call is how we will wake early to go and vote in so and so.

By the way, why don’t politicians give these goodies midterm but must wait for election year?

More importantly, why can’t voters see through these tricks and elect representatives who are true to the course whether they have money or not?

This kind of pork barrel politics is quite common. In the village, chairmen of the water project must be treated with due respect otherwise you will find your water disconnected, do what you may.

This is a reality every villager endures. The moment someone gets some form of office, delusions of grandeur kick in and they start believing they are the next best thing after sliced bread.

The regional demigods known as MCAs will dangle road projects that never come to fruition.

The MPs will use the County Development Funds to enrich select suppliers while ministers will crisscross their region promising heaven and earth. The President is the Grand Master of ‘taking projects to the people’.

But shouldn’t development trickle all the way down to the village without all the bells and whistles?

Methinks what we as voters should demand is that the government keeps us abreast of all development projects with all the finer details.

How much was allocated to a specific project? Can we get a quarterly update of where we are, the contractor engaged for the work, how much the project will eventually cost and what has been paid out so far?

As it is today, we have numerous incomplete and ghost projects, where money has been spent but we have nothing to show for it. Examples abound.

On the way to Nakuru, there is a structure near Naivasha that was supposed to serve as a fish market but is now derelict.

The ugly edifice consumed more than a hundred million shillings. Even to a layman like me, the structure, as it is today, should not have cost more than Sh10 million.

It is nothing more than four walls and some cheap galvanised iron roof.

In Mai Mahiu, there is a grand hospital that was nearing completion but is now overgrown by bushes; fortunately, local stray dogs found a home.

We have roads abandoned all over the country, yet quite some work has gone into it.

I always wonder: how much do we pay for compensation to the contractors who had been given such work but whose contracts are shred when a new government comes into office?

We appreciate the reality the new oligarchs in government must get their preferred contractors so that they can get the ten per cent kick back but the good of the country must always override wanton greed and gluttony. Easier said than done though.

-The writer is a communications consultant