Kenyan elections, from General Election to the mama mboga ‘chama elections’ are very steep hills hated by all incumbents.
Once one is elected into an office, what he or she wills is that the exercise of election be banned and people settle for something else other than elections!
The people who hate elections most are the politicians.
A Kenyan pessimist, alarmed by the longevity of one Francis Atwoli at Central Organisation of Trade Unions, recently asked on Twitter if the organisation ever holds elections.
He just could not believe that the same person has been in office long before his parents met and married!
Well, there are elections there which start from primaries with the choosing of delegates and end at the national level.
The elections are seemingly free and fair and the number of voters easy to identify and count the votes. That is where the simplicity ends.
The campaigns are never visible to the naked eye. The bribes donned out, together with promises of more to come, are very enticing to the delegates.
Usually, the best delegates that money can buy make their way with full stomachs and chubby cheeks to elect the person!
The system, especially for Football Kenya Federation (FKF), is deliberately hieroglyphic. As it stands, FKF has held elections twice, and they have twice been annulled.
The matter is now with Fifa because as it is, we are too incompetent to hold any elections fairly in this nation.
We no longer feel any shame about such foreign interference to set our crooked course right.
Fifa, in its wisdom, gave us more time to resolve the impasse and then Covid-19 pandemic took hold and everything stopped.
We still are in the dark about the elections but we know other aspirants are still warming up to the presidency.
Among them are the long-time Cecafa steerer Nick Musonye and many other less known people. The old faces of Sam Nyamweya and his close cronies are also there.
The incumbent and his team are hoping to remain there for as long as their life expectancy allows them. We wish them all the best in their quest.
What we only hope for is that they are not interested in the power and finances that the office brings them but on the growth of Kenyan football.
That simple hope is of course far-fetched and hollow and in reality, we should only hope that good things happen in spite of them!
Football has not been run in a professional manner in this country.
There are some people who are of the persuasion that football is on its deathbed in Kenya because all former players have never taken up the duty of seeking the posts and doing good things that were never done to them.
We know many of them do not have the deep pockets to buy delegates, but it is a high time we encouraged them to take a step towards that direction.
It is not enough that we criticise FKF without seizing its horns and guiding it! Former footballers, unite!
