THE WISDOM OF CHANUA ACHEBE

By Nicholas Asego

In 1983, Nobel Laureate Chinua Achebe published a book outlining what he believed was the trouble with Nigeria.

The first sentence of the novel, The Trouble With Nigeria, states: "The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership." Achebe then comments: "The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership."

In his later publication Anthills of the Savannah (1987) Achebe sets out to solve the leadership problems afflicting Nigeria. In fact, the novel came to be regarded as Achebe’s leadership thesis.

This concern that troubled Achebe many years ago is being re-enacted right before our very eyes here in Kenya. Our political leaders have reduced us to the wretched of the earth, those who have been dispossessed, borrowing from Fanon’s timeless text.

Their recent decision to unilaterally increase their travel allowance is wrong and to backdate the same to July last year is completely immoral. That they will pocket some Sh800,000 in arrears and nobody can remember the last time they passed a Bill is heartbreaking.

As if this is not enough, they decided to treble the constituency kitty of which they are managers along with those whom they have selected. With the 2007 General Election around the corner, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see the driving force behind their actions.

Almost always when they increase their pay, they vote unanimously, bridging glaring political differences.

Our parliamentarians have failed to establish vital links with the poor, the dispossessed. In a struggling economy like ours, with the greater percentage of the population living on less than a dollar a day, one is amazed at their insensitivity.

While we struggle to get by each day, they cruise past in their fuel guzzlers leaving us chocking in the dust. Like Achebe’s Nigeria, we need nay pray nay crave not for a style of leadership that projects and celebrates the power and greed that has dominated Kenya but for sobriety and peace.

While we crave for a solution to the ever-widening gap between the "tiny class" of the elite and ordinary Kenyans, they are busy telling lewd jokes about important issues like the Sexual Offences Bill.

We ordinary Kenyans, the wretched of the earth are the real victims of our callous system. We are silent and invincible and hardly make it to the front pages. We drink bad water or lack it all together and suffer from preventable diseases as all the while our leaders feign ignorance. We constantly raid one another for water and pasture.

We have to walk to and from our casual jobs because we can’t afford the increased fare. At the end of the day, we must purchase maize flour, milk and bread at the same price with our dear leaders; there is no respite for poor Kenyans.

Like Achebe warned Nigeria, we must take a hard and unsentimental look at the crucial question of leadership and political power. Like the political leadership in Anthills of the Savannah, our leaders have "openly looted our treasury" and "soiled our national soul". We shall never experience real progress without proper leadership. Our undoing is that so far, our politicians have only manifested vicious, incompetent and corrupt leadership.

May be Achebe has a point when he says that "the people get the leadership they deserve up to a point". As they transverse the country declaring their candidature and smiling at the results of Steadman polls, all the while giving us hand-outs, few among us realise that in fact, what they are "giving" belongs to us.

Like the Excellency in Anthills of the Savannah who coerces his commissioners, our Parliamentarians have mastered the art of coercion. They have arm-twisted the Government to agree to their heinous demands for more money, but this will not last.

They need to realise that power can lead to both progressive objectives and destructive aims. This "burden" of leadership can either elicit patriotic or parasitic tendencies in the utilisation and exercise of power. Like the Excellency, people’s ignorance can only lead to politicians becoming parasites of power and this in turn leads to shameless excesses.

Call me what you like but so far, our parliamentarians have shown extraordinary parasitic tendencies.