State of the Nation: President's own account contradicts reality by far

Conceptually, Article 132(1)(b) and (c) of the Constitution that demands that the President present an annual State of the Nation Address to a joint House of Parliament grants the Head of State a unique moment to self-appraise their performance each year. Therefore, it should come as no surprise if the President exaggerates some facts in an attempt to blow his own trumpet. Equally, it is a great opportunity for a President to cast a vision for the nation for the coming year or years.

Given the public expectation elicited by such an address, it would be expected that the team preparing such a report would go an extra mile to verify the information tabled to the nation for accuracy and consistency. Anything short of that would easily create doubt and turn the intended outcomes hollow, and, at best, a fairy tale.

Reflecting on the totality of President William Ruto’s address to the nation this past Thursday, it is very difficult to comprehend anything tangible that a policy expert can hold onto to translate into a specific action point. On this assessment, this column appropriates itself full responsibility of the naysayer tag that the President kept on referring to, unless and until an alternative credible evidence is presented to the nation outside what is publicly available.

Even before the President finished his address, both mainstream and social media were already flagging out certain facts as either untrue or inconsistent with his own recent public submissions. That definitely cannot be good from a credibility assessment, especially for a President struggling to resonate with the masses.

Structural defects

I shall not delve into the verification of some of the numbers presented as achievements. Several media outlets have already done a good job in this trail of analysis. Here, I will lean on the conceptual and structural aspects of what appears to be President Ruto’s invitation of Kenyans into a bold future that he has on his mind. On Thursday, he continued his recently found veiled attack on Kenyans and past administrations of either lacking foresight into this bold future or being of average minds.

On a balance of evidence, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the President casting a bold vision for the nation and mobilizing the people towards it. In fact, that must be the default orientation of any man or woman to whom the gods grants this unique opportunity to hold the position of President. The problem comes when a leader appears to assume that disruptive economic transformations happen in a vacuum.

While it is easy for any leader or citizen of a poor or developing country to get mesmerized by what Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson called the economic miracles of the twentieth century (nations that overcame extreme odds to move from poverty to extreme wealth) in the decades of 1960 to 2000, the story of these nations cannot be told outside the context of their work: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty: Why Nations Fail.

Put differently, while the President dreams of the power and prosperity of the ‘Asian Tigers’, both his administration and the successive ones before him are everything else Acemoglu and Robinson describes as the origins of poverty. The President correctly described the factors that led to the dramatic economic transformations of these economies, including authentic leadership, discipline, strategic investments and rejection of mediocrity.

The troubling questions here are: if it is true that these are the ingredients that turned around Singapore, South Korea, Japan, China, United Arab Emirates and recently Vietnam, can any of these factors be said of the administration he heads today? Did any of the leaders who led these nations through their critical moment of transformation leave office with a personal fortune that only competes with their own country’s Gross Domestic Product, purely on account of their public office jobs? What personal trade-offs did the leaders of these countries make, so that their nations and citizens could rise?

More importantly, it is worth noting that President Ruto did not drop from nowhere to become the President. He has not only played pivotal roles in successive previous administrations for the past three and half decades, but was also at vantage points in critical moments of history that have shaped the present trajectory that the nation finds itself in today. In previous public addresses, he has pleaded for more time to deliver on their promises. Can he now morally excuse himself from the blame apportionment of our leadership failures?

With the current narrative of turning the nation into a First World in record time, does it connote a Damascus moment? More fundamentally, can any leader lead a nation to attain such feats of economic transformations without the people buying into his vision first? Why then does his administration have to blow millions of taxpayers money to mobilize people to attend even official public functions? Where is the disconnect here?

Looking back to look forward

To contextualize the four bold proposals that the President has sold as the magic wand to deliver his bold vision, we must look back to evaluate the three years he has been the President. Here, we will sample only a few cases.

On the question of strategic investments toward human capital development, it is true that Ruto’s administration has made huge budgetary allocation towards the education sector. However, the interventions in the sector have been at best chaotic, ill-thought-out and lacking in sustainability measures. The university funding model, the junior secondary school transition, and release of funds for basic education have their own real stories outside the one told at the National Assembly chamber on Thursday.

For research and development, as at the date of this article, the National Research Fund website indicates it has funded only 14 projects since its inception in 2015, with a cumulative total of Sh170,332,404. Only three are listed as ongoing, with the rest listed complete. All the projects were funded between 2017 and 2022. Unless the Fund has failed to update its website, there doesn’t seem to be any new research funding or projects in the three years President Ruto has been in office.

Turning to the Affordable Housing Project, the Boma Yangu website lists registered people as 894,859 plus and active contributors as only 30,000 plus, translating to a paltry 3.35 per cent of active contributors. This data demolishes the assertion that people are now asking, “where do I own a house?”.  

As more housing units get offloaded into the market, the forces of demand and supply will soon tell the true story. So far, there are still a significant numbers of units that have been on offer for sometime in various parts of the country with no buyers yet.

The Social Health Authority challenges need no explanations here, because the masses understand better the reality at the service delivery points.

Finally, the infrastructure propositions that earned him a standing ovation from the broad-based leaning Parliament, the notion that the Infrastructure Fund and Sovereign Wealth Funds will miraculously resolve our fiscal space challenges is far-fetched. Such funds can only grow alongside the existing fiscal space.

From a strategic thought, the President is simply creating a narrative for his campaign for a second term. He seems to have completely outlived the hustler narrative that propelled him into power and cast his lot with the dynasties. Or was dropping the names of the late former Prime Minister Raila Odinga and former President Uhuru Kenyatta a mere coincidence?