Kenya deserves public servants not snake-oil vendors – Weekly Citizen

When Rashid Echesa was recently arrested and subsequently arraigned in court over alleged security tender forgery, the question of how, in the first place, he qualified to sit in Cabinet was rekindled. That he has no papers showing he has ever seen the inside of college is an open secret. But Cabinet Secretary he became.

All in all, give it to Echesa! Unlike many whose dazzling CVs more than qualify them to hold high office, Echesa’s eulogy, when it is finally penned and read, will celebrate him as ‘a one time Cabinet Secretary’. Shetani ashindwe!

Lest we forget, recently departed President Moi was a master at pumping power into airheads who terrorized Kenya for the better part of his reign. On the political front, the likes of Kariuki Chotara, Ezekiel Barng’etuny and Mulu Mutisya were elevated to unthinkable heights during Moi’s rule. In academia, the same status was conferred upon a handful of handpicked ‘professors’ who bestrode the corridors of universities with haughty eyes, bulgy thoraxes, tumescent abdomens and bloated wallets.

Echesa

With the unceremonious ouster of Echesa, there is hope yet that other fraudulently procured high-ranking public officials will finally be shown the door and the merchandise of snake-oil they vend exposed for what it is. As they say, the guilty are always afraid and to cover their fright, they usually resort to bullying and grandstanding.

German-American Pentecostal evangelist Reinhard Bonnke who passed on in December 2019 and who was renowned for his gospel missions throughout Africa prophetically proclaimed that, “The Bible says that the devil is like a roaring lion (1 Peter

5:8). He comes in the darkness, and tries to frighten the children of God with his mighty roar. But when you switch on the light of the Word of God, you discover that there is no lion. There is only a mouse with a microphone! The devil is an imposter. Got it?”

Need it be belaboured further? Bonnke was so right.

Vigilant Kenyans are now keenly looking at the antics and tomfoolery of some of our leaders with a view to smoke out the mice with microphones in our midst. A section of members of staff at the Education Ministry, irked by the needless aggravation and condescending attitude of their CS Professor George Magoha are determined to uncover what they are referring to as Magoha’s fraudulent academic accomplishments.

It may seem that finally Magoha has met his match. An onslaught aimed at undressing the burly man is afoot. Some brave Kenyan argues that Magoha’s exhibitionist conduct is a smokescreen meant cover-up the man’s inadequacies. The grapevine also has it that Magoha managed only a Bachelors degree from Nigeria – Africa’s unofficial headquarters of the most heartless flimflammers and con artists—but is a professor nonetheless.

Our investigator, however, found out that indeed medics in some jurisdictions are granted leave of attaining PhDs in lieu of conducting ground-breaking medical research and publishing the findings in reputable journals. An avowed Magoha critic and Universities Academic Staff Union (UASU) leader who has since left the University of Nairobi claims that Magoha shouted his way to professorial appointment.

The critic says that there are two categories of phony professors and pseudoacademics who fall in the order of Moi-ism and the era thereof. The first category had appointees awarded underserved academic titles for joining the court jester bandwagon.

Their main contribution was to humour the king with contrived political analyses and hollow political phraseology. The second category required one to display despotic behaviour delivered in high, if deafening decibel. In other words a noisy bully strutting along university corridors back in the day had better chances of ascending to professorial echelons than thoughtful intellectuals lacking in bootlicking skills. Invariably, both categories attracted only snake-oil merchants.

A relic of a dying tradition, Magoha alongside a handful of others, belongs to both schools. A well-respected Professor of the University of Nairobi confided in our investigator that the good professor’s claim to have been identified by Prof. Francis Gichaga as a talented member of staff is a lie construed to conceal the “hot line” calls placed in his favour to the then Vice Chancellors by a onetime powerful Rift Valley Provincial Commissioner and later Permanent Secretary for Internal Security, a man who is now deceased.

It is further claimed that our good CS is a professor by decibel bereft of the academic gravitas of a true intellectual and Professor. One then wonders how a whole University of Nairobi did not smell the mouse with a microphone ten miles away!

The most fervent attempt by Magoha to conceal his true academic worth is in a 91- page tome he calls his CV. If there ever was an insolent, hyperbolic and cretinous CV stitched with fluff and cotton candy all to bamboozle puny pseudo-intellectuals, then it is Magoha’s CV.

Those in the know at the Ministry of Education are apprehensive that one of these days universities will wake up to find their systems completely obliterated and upstaged by alien organs formed by Magoha to contain administration. Sources have intimated to our investigator that the idea is to superimpose suspect miscellaneous amendments to the Universities Act and regulations thereon in a bid to claw back institutional autonomy and micromanage institutions that already have their own governing statutes besides being guided by the Commission for University Education, the bona fide organ mandated to regulate university education in Kenya.

Other concerns expressed by policymakers at the Ministry of Education involve Magoha’s demonization of University Councils that he is on record for having irregularly dismissed or tampered with as innocuous appendages that add little value to the management of universities. The truth is universities through history are institutions of tradition and law. Disregarding the long-entrenched organs that universities are governed through is choking the soul of intellectualism.

A source at the University of Nairobi confirmed to Weekly Citizen that it is during Magoha’s tenure that massification of PhDs took root at the institution. He pushed various schools and colleges hard to record numbers with little care about the quality that he is now busy castigating. Talk of double standards!

A few days ago, an indicting video clip shot at the UoN Towers that went viral but few may have known that Magoha is right in the middle of the unfolding saga.

Apparently two floors of the prestigious tower was illegally sold to the Chinese during Magoha’s tenure as Vice Chancellor. In the past even when UoN has received a donation in form of buildings from external benefactors such as the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation, the Israelis or the UN, no one has come back to claim space, However, this time round, we have the UoN Towers shared with some Chinese courtesy of the greed of an individual.

The sun is clearly soon setting on all shades of metaphorical mice with microphones. In academia, natural attrition coupled with recent and future retirements will continue to clean up the system. As it transforms itself into a society that treasures merit and probity guided by the ethos of integrity and accountability, Kenya must free herself from fraudsters of every hue and vestige and the time is now. Kama si sasa, ni sasa hivi!